


The Feral

by glitterandrocketfuel



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Alpha Patrick, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, M/M, No mpreg, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Omega Pete, Omega!Pete, Van Days, alpha!patrick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-28 14:14:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 31,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17788931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glitterandrocketfuel/pseuds/glitterandrocketfuel
Summary: According to all the commercials and talk shows, Patrick is Doing Alpha Wrong. But finding your place in the Chicago Softcore scene means doing it your own way, anyway. When he encounters a mysterious omega that won't be "tamed" like all the talk shows say they should, the sunny little alpha who can't growl anyone into submission might be the only one who can reach...The Feral. ::cue dramatic soap opera music::





	1. Growl

**Author's Note:**

  * For [laudanum_cafe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laudanum_cafe/gifts).



> A gift for @laudanum_cafe since there's not much A/B/O stuff in this cursed fandom. I started out with what was supposed to be a smutty little short for a friend and it turned into a whole goddamn book. Not only that, but a story that required watching of HGTV and skimming through more Better Homes and Gardens for decorating ideas than I would care to admit. I would say sorrynotsorry, but I was just here providing the fingers while this story wrote itself. In multiple chapters. This story takes place during the band's early formation and takes liberties with that formation, so you have to squint to see canon. Patrick is nineteen and Pete's twenty-three.
> 
> Laudanum, my darling, this book is a fridge box--on the outside, it may say "whirlpool" but on the inside, there's a whole world. I hope you enjoy, my friend.

 

* * *

 

 

 

Patrick didn’t always feel like an alpha, but after fending off challenges from two other alphas when he was just trying to play an acoustic set, he was ready to snarl. The only problem with that instinct was that Patrick didn’t so much snarl as he purred.

Joe laughed at him for it as they packed up their instruments and nodded to Marcus that they were ready to brave the crowd. “Unusual amount of alphas out tonight.”

“Acting like it, too. Assholes.” The manager put protective hands on each of their shoulders and led them through the crowd towards the exit. “They’re out looking for independent omegas after the last sanctuary bust.”

“The cops need to leave those folks alone, and same goes for those alpha-holes.” Patrick sent a glance out to the bar area, where he could hear loud bursts of laughter punctuated by alpha growls that were as forced and fake and the auditory equivalent of shoving rolled-up tube socks down the front of your pants.

Andy, Joe’s alpha, their drummer, and the most laid-back person Patrick knew, waited with Marie, his beta girlfriend. Marcus leaned over and murmured something into Andy’s ear. The redhead glanced at Marcus, then at Joe, and nodded. “I’ll take care of him,” he said.

Joe nudged Patrick. “See you later, Patrick. Sorry that guy I told you about was a no-show. I think he’d like you.”

Patrick shrugged. “It’s cool. I didn’t mind singing but, like, I’d just as soon not do it again in front of people.” Especially if he had to front so the other alphas would leave Joe alone. Especially if he had to face the omegas who caught his scent, came close, and then veered off because he wasn’t aggressively dominant or looking for a mate.

Ask anyone, and they’d tell you that Patrick was a lousy alpha. He didn’t fit the stereotypes, and he didn’t care what people thought. Neither did Joe, Andy, or Marie. None of them gave a single fuck, in spite of what the talk shows said. They were working on starting their band, and everything else was just bullshit. Hell, the trio didn’t have any room to talk, considering Joe and Andy were a matched pair of alpha and omega who defied the whole “mated pair” ideal. Joe was solidly in love with Marie, and she with him. When Joe went into heats, Andy went into their bed, and when Andy was in rut, he was free to seek out whomever, unless he specifically asked for Joe.

Patrick’s best guess put that at often enough to renew Joe and Andy’s bond but not enough to come between Joe and Marie. As far as he knew, Marie was always part of it. The point was that it worked for them, and fuck anyone who had a problem with it.

Patrick’s alpha-ness worked the same way. He was friendly and open and loved the world, and when he went into rut, he only wanted to love it harder, so he locked himself away and handled things himself, just in case the world didn’t want to be loved right then.

Still, as he and Joe and Andy made more progress in putting themselves out into the Chicago softcore scene, Patrick had begun to feel hints of…yearning.

Most of the time it was a hint of a scent–that perfect mate-scent that stupid rom-coms always played up as the solution to any and every incompatibility. As an excuse for bad relationships, “But you smell so _mine_ ,” had a lot to answer for. “Smell so mine” couldn’t make up for asshole behavior or dysfunctional dependency.

_Or cheating_ , Patrick thought, stuffing memories of Anna back down into the basement of his resentment where they belonged.

Anyway, the softcore scene wasn’t exactly welcoming to a trio that lurched between hardcore metal riffs and funky R&B with a chubby little white boy groaning into the microphone, that also sometimes played covers of The Spice Girls when they were feeling particularly ornery. But they’d attracted some attention, specifically from the undisputed king of the scene, one Pete Wentz, of Arma, of Racetraitor, of half a dozen other bands that flared up and flared out with the same screamo energy as Pete purportedly flung into the audience.

Part of the magic of Pete Wentz seemed to be how he appeared and disappeared almost as if summoned, and that nobody could get a bead on his orientation. Some said he took illegal suppressants. Some said he was a mutant, that he’d missed the changewave that shook the world back in the early seventies, forcing people to manifest orientations that had heretofore been dormant in humanity, and shaking the foundations of society so violently that it damn near collapsed. But all that was before Patrick was born and nobody who lived through the time liked to talk about the dark times and the riots. Some people did whisper that Pete might be one of the rare, strange people who just never manifested anything–alpha, beta, or omega.

Patrick said–although not to anybody that could hear–that Pete was probably a brilliant bullshit artist with a collection of vintage colognes and perfumes from back before artificial scents were outlawed. Patrick’s own grandmother kept a collection of jeweled bottles with names like _Sweet Honesty_ and _Shalimar_ and _L'Air du Temps_ carefully hidden from prying eyes that weren’t her inquisitive little grandson.

And Pete was probably the source of most of the outrageous rumors about him. After all, when one of his bands imploded, there were two waiting in the wings to pick him up. The only thing puzzling was why Patrick hadn’t actually met the guy yet.

He was about to climb into Marcus’s car when he caught the scent again. The perfect scent that made him want to track it and follow. “Hey Marcus, I think I’m walking to the pancake joint on the corner. I’m hungry and I’m sweaty. I can meet you there.”

Marcus eyed him. “You sure, bro?”

Patrick nodded. “It’s just to the corner.”

Marcus shrugged. “I’ll go park and wait for you.”

Patrick waved his friend off and started walking towards the scent.

He turned down one of the alleys between the club and the corner, following the scent. Overlaid with Vietnamese food, but solid and present. But the alley was a deserted dead end. He backed out and shrugged. Maybe whoever that was had come out to the alley to take a leak or pick up takeout.

He put the scent out of his mind and turned back to the sidewalk.

Above him, on the fire escape, unnoticed, a pair of feral golden eyes tracked his every movement. A low growl, almost too low for even sensitive human ears, rumbled around the walls of the alley.

_Alpha…_

 

 

 


	2. On The Scent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our intrepid, inquisitive alpha follows his nose into a dark and dangerous place. Best be careful, little red riding hoodie, else you might meet the wolf...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hit me up on tumblr at @glitterandrocketfuel!

 

 

Patrick was back at the Cellar a few nights later, taking a turn at the drums for one of the pickup bands when he heard Keith talking low to Joe.  _ “…haven’t seen him all today, either, man. I mean…gets…episodes…dangerous…hurt himself.” _

Joe frowned. “I dunno, man. But I can fill in, I guess. I really wanted him to be here tonight. He’s never met my boy Patrick. Kid’s going places.”

“Joe, I’m older than you.” Patrick stuck his tongue out at his friend, just to prove it.

Keith opened his guitar case and the tantalizing hint whiffed out again–stale this time, but unmistakable. “Hey Keith, what’s in your case?” Patrick edged out from behind the drum kit and picked his way through the coiled cables to the guitarist’s gear.

Keith shrugged and toed the case further open. “It’s a Fender. Used. Why, you into ‘em?”

Patrick followed the scent trace and crouched down, pretending to examine the guitar Keith held out for his inspection. “I prefer Gretsch, but I’ve got a Fender at home. My dad’s.” His fingers drifted over something in the bottom of the case–soft fleece fabric–and a cloud of stale scent rose from it. He pulled it out, trying to keep his voice calm. The little bat-heart design was barely discernible in the worn fabric and Patrick’s eyes only caught it because his fingers found the rough spots first.

Keith took the hoodie. “Ugh. People have got to stop using guitar cases for laundry baskets. Sorry about that.”

Patrick stood up. “Which people?”

Keith shrugged. “Coulda been anywhere. Practice here, practice there, gig across town. Maybe one of the kids in for lessons. I’ll keep it until someone claims it or I get cold enough to wear it.” He was in almost as many bands as Pete Wentz was purportedly in, plus he gave lessons at the local music shop. “Why? You know whose it is?”

“I–” Patrick didn’t know what possessed him to lie–no, scratch that, he did. The scent. “I think I might know who belongs to this. Mind if I take it?”

Keith tossed the hoodie at him. “G'head. One less thing I have to dick with.”

Patrick folded the garment carefully. Other scents–motor oil, fast-food grease, sweat, maybe some hair product–he could tease them out, but he had the main scent locked. “Thanks.”

“No problem. Thank you for bailing us out on drums. You and Joe are life-savers. I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with Pete.”

Andy spoke up from where he coiled amp cords. “Don’t worry about Pete. He’ll turn up in a day or two. He always does.”

“Why doesn’t anybody go look for him? Go around to his place, check on him?”

Andy shook his head. “Pete comes back to the scene. The scene doesn’t go to Pete. Just…let him be.”

He spoke the words to Keith, who shrugged. “I’m just getting tired of having to sub in for gigs.”

Andy shrugged. “Come on, man. We all know that none of these drunks gives a shit who’s screaming into the mic as long as it’s full of pain and rage and a hundred forty beats per minute.”

Patrick paused in tucking the hoodie into his backpack. “Hey, that’s not true. Arma, Neurosis, Racetraitor, Patterson–they all have different sounds, even when it’s mostly the same pack of dudes playing in them.”

“Sometimes chicks,” Marie called from behind the sound board where she sat, flipping through a newspaper whose headline read,  _ Police Raid Community Omega Nest/Illegal Suppressant Ring _ . “Don’t forget there are girls in this scene, too.”

“And girls,” Patrick amended.

Keith nodded. “Awesome, terrifying chicks have been part of this scene forever.”

Marie raised her eyebrows. “Joe, I’m waiting for your input.”

“Uh, nobody threw an elbow in the pit like this girl Joy, back in the day. At least, to hear the bouncer talk.”

Marie smiled and went back to her newspaper. Patrick, for his part, had the hoodie, and a sudden case of the fidgets. And it wasn’t like Andy not to notice. The other alpha pulled him aside. “Are you coming up on something?”

Patrick frowned. “I don’t think so.” He tried to remember when his last rut was, but he’d never been a clockwork kinda guy. “I mean, I’m not feeling snarly or anything.”

Andy tilted his head. “All the same, why don’t I take over the sub tonight.”

Uncertainty twisted Patrick’s insides. “Are you–don’t you think I can handle this?”

Andy’s eyes widened and he touched the backs of Patrick’s hands with the tips of his drumsticks. “Not at all. I was going to ask you anyway. Joe’s a little close to his heat. Not for his comfort, but for mine. He’d never dream about stiffing Keith, even for heat-onset, but I’d feel better if I were close enough just in case someone gets aggressive. With all those independent omegas supposedly roaming the city now that the community sanctuary was busted up--somebody might get the wrong idea.”

Patrick searched Andy’s eyes, looking for the truth. He breathed in, just in case he scented something he couldn’t read otherwise. But Andy’s face was as honest as his words. Patrick finally nodded. “Sure, Andy. If Keith’s cool with it, I’ll head out and get something to eat, then be back here to be your loudest fan.”

Andy smiled. “Probably our only fan.”

“And you’d play just as hard for me by myself as you would for a whole stadium.”

“I would.” Andy nodded. “I didn’t really mean what I said before. You and me and Joe–we’ve got a sound of our own that…means something. It matters.”

Patrick nodded. Unspoken between them was the knowledge that what they all had between them–when he and Joe and Andy played–was also missing something. Patrick would know it when he heard it, but until then, they did their best to hone their sound, played covers, and tried new things that sometimes worked and sometimes sounded like shit. They just didn’t really, truly fit in anywhere.

He left out the back door, letting Keith and Andy know he was headed to the diner. He had his backpack over one shoulder and partially unzipped, the mystery hoodie up near the top. He didn’t exactly lie to Andy and Keith. He just left out a small detour he planned to take.

Outside, the wind kicked up stray newspapers under the sodium lights and Patrick shivered in his collared polo shirt. So much for the unseasonably warm streak in December Chicago. He pulled the hoodie out of his pack. It would make his mission harder, having the sweatshirt and its scent surrounding him, but he didn’t want to freeze, either.

With the hoodie wrapped around him, it was harder to pick up the scent, but Patrick detected it nevertheless. The two matched, although there were hints of difference in the more recent scent coming from the alley. The near end of the alley held the dumpster for the Vietnamese place and two other doorways, all locked when he tried them. Stairwells leading up to the apartments above, he figured.

Above them, the zig-zagged grates of fire escapes stretched up six floors, passing windows mostly unlit. Some landings held blobs that carried the faint smells of plant life and dirt and pot, both fresh and dried.

He wondered if the scent’s owner worked at the restaurant or lived in one of the apartments. But he couldn’t detect anything outside the doorways where a scent trace might linger as someone searched for a key or turned a knob.

He moved deeper into the alley, closer towards the opposite end where it came out on the cross-street, which was a dead-end access drive blocked off by chain link that Patrick could have probably glared at and knocked down, but it looked rusty and, well, tetanus was a thing.

He paused for a moment to look around and breathe. The scent was stronger here, and not just the stale, week-old odor from the hoodie, which was now mixing with Patrick’s own faint scent. He passed the dumpster and discovered a hole in the ground, waiting to swallow him up.

Okay, not actually a  _ hole _ –a stairwell leading down into a basement entrance for the building, illuminated by a weak light that shone just bright enough to partially illuminate the green painted wooden door that looked like an original part of the building. Dry-rot darkened the edges around the door and there was no way Patrick was moving anywhere closer to that thing.

Patrick gulped back the dread climbing his throat, cutting off the low rumble that wanted to crawl out with it. The part of him that said, “Attack!” was the stupid part. The part that had gotten him into fistfights he had no chance of winning and worse–made him say things that genuinely hurt people’s feelings and made  _ him  _ feel worse than  _ they’d _ acted.

It looked like the perfect place to lie in wait for a stupid kid stumbling down the wrong alley outside the club. But the scent was stronger here. Different. Sweeter. Smart of them to hide this scent behind the dumpster, he thought. Though where he got the idea that someone might be hiding this, he couldn’t say. Dumpster odor nearly overwhelmed the first half of the alley, but back here, it seemed to clear out, leaving the mystery scent to take its place.

Without the smells of Vietnamese food and garbage, the heady aroma started to have a noticeable effect on him. Patrick suddenly became aware of his breathing and his body. His jaw slackened, lips parted to take in more of the scent on the back of his tongue as well as his olfactory receptors. His ears picked out the small noises of rats in the dumpster, the way the wind moaned around the corners, the distant sound of street traffic, his own breathing.

He froze, swinging his head back and forth. And something else.

He couldn’t exactly hear it as much as he felt it. A low thrum. Something deep in his back teeth, at the back of his tongue, the center of his sternum.

Something that sent his hackles straight to the roof, even as it brought an answer humming up from his throat.

But his feet–his feet had other ideas. He approached the shadowed depths. With every step he took, his own throat started to respond to the thrum with a purr of its own. “H-hello?”

A light scrape behind him was the only warning he had before he was shoved forward and down into the deep dark hole of the stairwell.


	3. Invader

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Curious little alphas shouldn't wander too close to the lair of the beast, but Patrick was never very good at doing what an alpha should.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this whole story in an orgiastic spasm of flailing words. Without a net.

Patrick came to sometime later. He blinked twice before he realized it was pitch-dark. The scent–the delightful, arousing, alluring,  _ make-me-do-stupid-things _ scent–sat like a thick coating on his tongue. He made to wipe his face when he realized his hands were tied above his head. He scrabbled with his fingers and found his bonds were strips of fabric. Maybe he could tear through–

Patrick licked dry lips and wondered where his glasses had gotten to. Other than being tied up, he seemed to be unhurt, and the blankets underneath him were oddly comfortable. He still wore the hoodie which he now understood to belong to the Omega hiding out here.

He tried to catalog what he knew of his situation. The last thing he remembered was the scent growing stronger as he stood at the top of the stairwell leading to the basement door, and then the attack from behind. In fact, his shoulder blades still hurt.

He shifted his shoulders to try to find a marginally more comfortable position and another wave of Omega-scent came through the blankets underneath him. Okay, so he was on a pile of blankets. Tied to–he wriggled his fingers again and found– _ yes, those are real iron pipes, ladies and gentlemen _ . He sighed.

A quiet rumble stopped his movements cold. His sharp, indrawn breath only drew in more of the crazy-making scent and he realized he was probably marinating in it.

He squinted vainly in the gloom, trying to catch another glimpse of his captor. He could hear the omega moving, pacing with an even, quick gait, but maintaining distance on the other side of the empty basement. “H-hello?” Patrick kept his voice as softly-pitched as possible.  _ Try not to antagonize the person who attacked you and tied you up, Stump _ , he told himself. Especially when the scent that surrounded him–the blend of old and fresh and calm and distressed–heavy on the distress–and so complex he could burrow into it.

The rumble came again, this time accompanied by the shuffle of feet. Patrick squinted–he could make out the blurry shapes of high windows and street lights filtering in to cast long bars of weak light over the floor.

A crouched figure crossed one of the stripes. Patrick caught a flash of dark hair partly obscuring his captor’s face and a lithe, compact frame. Patrick was certain it was a him from the masculine notes in the scent. If he had more time and his own body stopped throwing off fear-scent, he could probably identify more things about his captor. As it was, “omega” and “male” were the two most obvious.

But coming up hard on the heels in the number three spot? “Heat.” Patrick’s stomach twisted low and a burn started at the base of his spine. Not quite like his ruts, when they hit, but a shadow of them. A response, he realized. Pheromones were a hell of a thing to kick in now, when he’d been able to maintain blissful ignorance for so long. The omega passed under one of the windows, shaggy hair falling in his face and restless, wary desperation radiating from him. Right then and there, Patrick made a decision. Whatever happened, he  _ wouldn’t _ let his knot override his sense.

“Omega?”

Patrick had experienced ruts before, but never around an unclaimed omega. He’d been around Joe during his friend’s heat-onset days, but Joe always had an alpha–usually Andy–lined up to temporarily claim him with scent, and Patrick never felt the need to challenge Andy over Joe. Or anything, really. And Patrick made himself scarce when he felt an alpha rut coming on.

He had a beta girlfriend during one rut, and they experimented with his knot. But she ended up a little freaked out about Patrick’s unusual, non-standard alpha behavior when he wouldn’t– _ couldn’t _ –growl her into submission. “Being with an alpha is all hype and nothing like the movies,” he’d heard her telling a girlfriend some time after they’d broken up but remained friends.

Because of that, he’d never sought out any omegas in either his rut or their heat. The last thing he wanted was to fail an omega when they needed an alpha to claim or defend them.

“Alpha.” The name coming from the other end of the room was an epithet.

Patrick licked dry lips. “Y-yes.” He inhaled through his nose. The scent threatened to overwhelm him but he picked out subtle notes of present distress and past misery and his heart ached.

The omega snarled again–almost sort of words? “Alpha… _ never again…make you…make you all pay _ …”

Oh god. Those were not words anyone should have to hear–or say. “Hey,” Patrick said, trying to put into his words a calm he didn’t feel. The omega’s distress scent grew stronger and Patrick jerked against his bonds in response, curling his fingers into claws. “Hey, whatever I did, look–I’m sorry. I’ll go. Just–untie me. You’ll never see me again.”

“You trespassed. Came into my nest.”

_ This is a nest. This sad pile of discarded clothing and blankets is his nest. This is a nest. This whole place…is an omega’s nest _ .

With one wary eye on the other side of the room, where the omega prowled in the shadows, Patrick catalogued the environment. He lay on the pile of blankets at floor level–no canopied bower, not even a simple bed, no pillows. He could make out several blankets, most of them scratchy wool that smelled like the Army-Navy surplus store. When he turned his head, his cheek brushed up against a balled-up wad of denim, and he could detect hints of leather under his hip.

Against his will and against all sense or reasoning, Patrick’s heart clenched. “Poor thing,” he whispered. What kind of awful circumstance left an omega with such a meager nest?

In high school, everyone went through Concordance classes that taught post-changewave history and biology, and how orientations worked. Concordance classes taught that omegas possessed a nesting instinct so strong that they were practically defined by their nests. Patrick had even helped Andy and Marie plan out Joe’s nesting shower when he and Andy had become a bonded pair. Patrick’s woodworker cousin had made them a custom-designed bower and canopy frame in his woodshop big enough for the three of them. Andy and Marie painted the pieces, and Patrick helped assemble it in the bedroom they’d chosen as a nest. Their friends had all come with nesting gifts–pillows, blankets, panels of heavy and light fabrics for bower drapes, sachets in Joe’s favorite colors with scents like citrus and sandalwood and vanilla. Patrick wired both the canopy and Joe and Marie’s apartment’s nest room with surround sound speakers and a sound system with a remote control.

Joe’s nest, like Joe, would be filled with music, comfort, air flow, his favorite scents, and his favorite people, furnished with love and kindness by people who cared about him.

This nest was dirty cast-off clothes and grimy, donated blankets on a bare dirt floor in an abandoned basement.

Patrick swallowed. “I didn’t mean–I just wanted to find out who–”

An explosion of movement shot the other figure across the room and he was suddenly at Patrick’s side, chest heaving and low growling rumbling out of his throat. “You stole my scent!”

Patrick flinched as the omega’s fingers curled into the front of his hoodie.

“You stole it and mixed it with yours! You can’t have me!”

Patrick twisted away from the omega, whose warmth surrounded him and made his instincts fight against his common sense. His wrists burned, reminding him that the omega had attacked and tied him up. He should absolutely be fighting to escape with every fiber of his being.

But the scent surrounded him. The warmth enveloped him. His instincts taunted him.  _ He needs you _ . The omega sprang back just as quickly as he’d pounced, returning to the corner and crouching down on his haunches.  _ He’s confused. He needs someone to put him in his place _ .

Patrick rejected that notion outright. That was TV-alpha talk. “I don’t–” He didn’t finish the response, because it’d be a lie. He  _ did  _ want the omega, or at least his body did. “I didn’t steal your scent.” He wriggled his shoulders, sliding his body down in an effort to push up the hoodie he still wore. “You can have your jacket back. I was just looking for the owner so I could return…it…” he trailed off as the omega approached, staying close to the shadows.

“You came…to steal me…” The omega stalked closer, the growl rumbling up from his chest.

Patrick tried to swallow his body’s response, keep it locked down behind his sternum.  _ I’m in a nest _ , he finally realized, his mouth going dry.  _ I’m an alpha in an omega’s nest _ . His heart started to pound, unnaturally loud in the gloom.

There was only one reason an alpha ever entered an omega’s nest.

The omega’s fingers brushed his hair. Patrick couldn’t help it. He started to purr.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feedback gives me life.


	4. Principles & Instincts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What will you do, little wolf-boy, when the real wild things come for you?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will our intrepid little alpha in the lair of the beast become a monster himself?

* * *

 

If he weren’t tied up, he’d be pacing and making lists in his battered music notebook. _I’m an alpha, in an omega’s nest. In the saddest damn omega nest I’ve ever seen_. Even the Christmas commercials begging donations for alpha detention centers and omega shelters for society’s castoffs didn’t feel this sad. And the owner of that sad-sack nest was hours, maybe minutes, from heat. To put the cherry on the insanity sundae, Patrick was fucking purring as if he’d claimed the omega himself.

The omega peered down at him, his eyes the only glimmering points of reflected light in the darkness. “Why?” he ground out, making a broken noise. “Why would you come here?”

Patrick inhaled and wished he hadn’t–the omega scent was leaching brain cells from him–and tried to formulate an answer that would satisfy the omega and maybe get him untied and out of here without becoming the subject of an episode of Unsolved Mysteries. “The–the hoodie,” he mumbled. “My friend Keith wasn’t sure who’d left it–hey, do you know Keith?” Patrick followed the line on a hunch when the omega cocked his head at the guitarist’s name. “Maybe you take lessons from him?”

The omega snorted and it almost sounded sarcastic, but onset wasn’t really a time where people–whether they were alphas in rut-onset or omegas in heat-onset–really did sarcasm. Still… _If he’s this close to actual heat and slinging out sarcasm, he’s got incredible control_.

Nevermind the fact that he’d managed to ambush an alpha– _okay, Patrick_ –and tie him up. Clearly, this omega wasn’t your typical Omega channel made-for-TV movie, “helpless omega in the throes of heat” lead. Or even on par with Joe, whose wit and sense of humor took a backseat to baldly-voiced propositions like, “Coming up on heat, which one of you fuckers thinks they can take me?” Until Andy slung an arm around Joe’s neck and gave him a playful noogie and a pointed scenting and a muttered. “You mean thinks they can take _me_ .” And _that_ only counted if they survived Marie.

Patrick tried again. Sarcasm meant higher thinking, and higher thinking meant the omega could maybe be reasoned with. “You know Keith, that means you like music, yeah? I’m–I’m in a-a band.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. It was a prediction. “I play around here sometimes. I–I subbed for Arma Angelus once.”

At that, the omega barked out a sharp laugh. “Fuck me.”

It wasn’t a plea. Not even Patrick’s increasingly addling brain could take it as anything but an incredulous response to bullshit. He huffed. “Did so! I’m a drummer. I can play guitar, too.”

The omega had been creeping closer and Patrick only now noticed it. He jumped when the omega’s fingers curled into the hoodie and he jerked it up over Patrick’s shoulders. His shirt rode up, exposing a stripe of pale, tender stomach just above his belt. Patrick kept talking, faster now, hoping to ground the omega, help him keep his head, keep him calm. “So you do like music. You know I bet we know all the same people. The scene’s not that big. We could–”

“Shut up,” the omega growled. “Just because you know…the scene doesn’t mean–nothing makes you trust–” The omega gave a few more frustrated tugs but ran into the inevitable dead-end because, short of cutting the sleeves lengthwise, there was no way he was getting the hoodie off unless he untied Patrick’s hands. During all this awkward wrestling with fleece outerwear, Patrick couldn’t escape the omega’s proximity–his lean hips in skinny jeans, or the heat radiating off him in waves.

Patrick cleared his throat. The omega’s scent crawled into his mouth, slithered down his throat, into his lungs, seeping into his system like thick syrup. “It’s yours, isn’t it? The hoodie?” He twisted in the blanket nest and struggled to move–sit up, move away–move closer.

“Mine,” the omega growled. “But it smells like you. Like an _us_ that isn’t real.” The omega scuttled away again. “There is no _us_ . Never–never another alpha–no more–no _claiming–_ ”

“Hey, hey, easy, shh–shhh–I didn’t come here to claim you–”

Instead of comforting the omega, Patrick’s words just made him more agitated and the omega let out an anguished cry. He shuffled back against the wall, into the corner, but still close enough to the pathetic little nest–and to Patrick–to tangle one hand in the hoodie, sleeves now around the fabric securing Patrick’s wrists to the pipe.

Patrick angled his head up to see the omega bury his face in the hoodie’s bunched-up bottom hem and breathe deeply. A muffled, “Alpha,” came through, the fabric not enough to stifle the plaintive note that cut right through to the center of Patrick’s soul.

“No, wait–hey, I’m here.” The chill of the dirt floor seeped up through the blankets and prickled along Patrick’s exposed skin. “What is it you need, omega?”

The answer only came in the form of labored breathing, as if the other man only had the strength to drag air into his lungs, and the sighs that expelled it carried anguish and defeat in the form of long, low groans that sounded as tortured as they sounded needy in a way that Patrick’s groin really wanted to respond to.

Patrick swallowed and it echoed in the dank basement. His arms were growing stiff, but he could feel the material that tied him to the pipe giving a little.

The omega edged closer. “Need…oh, _fuck you!_ ” The last was an epithet, not an invitation.

Patrick bit his lip. _You know what the omega needs. He needs a knot. He needs a fucking alpha. He needs someone to take care of him through his heat and a goddamn nest that isn’t a sad little pile of castoffs_. He sucked in a breath (and more of the omega’s scent). “You…do you want, um, help with your heat?”

_Patrick, what the fuck are you doing? You don’t even know this guy! He could be a psycho. You aren’t even into guys. Well, not much, anyway_ . But pheromones aside, this was another person, in pain, and he was in a position–relatively speaking–to do something about it. “Hey, I don’t–what’s your name?” _Asking the guy who tied him to a pipe in a basement to put him at ease, these are Patrick Stump things_ , he thought.

The omega’s breathing became more labored. “ _Help_ ,” he sneered. “With my _heat_ . What a fucking _joke_.” He tangled his hands in his hair. Patrick couldn’t see more than shadows and blur, but the omega’s distress was palpable enough to taste.

He struggled to turn, to see if he could catch a better look at the omega in the dank darkness. “Really. I don’t mean sex, but like, there are things you could do–I could help. You don’t–you shouldn’t have to suffer like this.”

“The fuck do you care?”

At this, Patrick shrugged. “I dunno.” He tried honesty. “Look, my body’s making me want things I shouldn’t, too. But it’s not just sex. You–you shouldn’t have to lock yourself in a crummy basement with–whatever this is–just to be safe.” On impulse, he added, “And you damn well shouldn’t have to be claimed like a fucking object by some jackass just because they have the right blend of pheromones. You shouldn’t have to be coerced just because of what your body does.”

“No–yeah–yeah, you’re–you’re actually right?”

Patrick heard a scuffle as the omega sidled closer. “It’s been known to happen,” he said wryly.

“It’s just–you smell so good to me right now.”

Patrick laughed outright at that. “Dude, I get that. But, like–I don’t know you and you don’t know me and just because we smell good doesn’t mean we should–I mean, I won’t, like–No alpha should _ever_ –”

“I wish I could believe you,” the omega said, and the sadness in his voice shattered Patrick’s heart.

“I’m going to untie you now.” The omega let out a sigh. “Just–get it over with.”

Hands scrabbled at the rags holding Patrick’s wrists. The omega shifted his body around Patrick’s and some of those brushes had a very deliberate feel to them. Patrick felt the fabric around his wrists give at the same time he felt the omega tense above him, as if the other man braced himself for something unpleasant and inevitable.

Patrick was not unpleasant, nor would he be inevitable. But the omega had to straddle him to get the last knot loose and he could feel the dampness in the omega’s sweatpants, couldn’t help but smell the sweet slick leaking from the omega’s body. His hands came free and settled on the omega’s hips and, to his everlasting shame, he held the omega above him and ground his hips up as a sudden, powerful urge to rut took over.

Above him, the omega moaned, and it was a sound that held as much anguish as it did desire, and Patrick was not about that at all. He rolled to the side. “No,” he said firmly. “We are not going down like this.” He scrambled to his feet, trying to keep the purr from thrumming out of his throat as he shrugged off the hoodie that smelled like his and the omega’s scents mixed– _God, I was stupid, stupid for wearing it!_

The omega huddled to the side and growled, fit to intimidate as much as any alpha growl they played in the background of heavy-duty truck commercials on TV. “The fuck are you doing?”

Patrick peeled the hoodie all the way off and approached the omega. “I’m leaving,” he said. “Before I–meet your expectations of an alpha.” He spread the hoodie out over the omega, almost wishing he could see in the dark. To see the person hurting so much and so close, but who would be hurt more if Patrick tried to help. Instead, he twitched the last corner of the hoodie over the other boy’s body.

“The fuck is this for?” It was too dark to see, but the scorn coming off the omega hit Patrick like a wave from the lake.

“That should have enough of my scent on it to drive away anybody else who might come sniffing around.”

“I thought you said you’d help me with my heat.” The omega’s tone held challenge and scorn that was as much self-loathing as it was disgust for the process. “Aren’t you gonna–tell me–” The omega started to pant. “How bad I’m–supposed to–to want your–knot?”

“This _is_ helping,” Patrick retorted, determinedly ignoring the swell and pull low in his abdomen that said _knotknotknot yesyesyes nownownow before other alphas find him_. “I’d be a shit alpha if I didn’t protect first. And that’s all I’m doing. Good bye for now. I–I hope you feel better soon.” He strangled out the last of his words against mounting pressure in his jeans and the desperate need to get out before he lost his last two brain cells.

Patrick bolted from the basement with one hand down his pants, pressing against the base of his cock. He made it to the darkest corner behind the dumpster and tore his fly open just in time to thrust into his hand twice before coming all over the brick and the rusted edge of the dumpster. He stood, shivering and hoodie-less, as his dick pulsed in fingers that couldn’t tighten hard enough to counter the crotch-cramping pain that came from knotting into nothing.

Patrick sagged against the side of the building, breathing in the scent of the omega that was just enough to keep his knot pulsing, but not enough to ease the ache in his jaw or the catch in his chest when he thought of the nameless omega, curled in on himself just behind the basement door. So close, yet so scared and disgusted by Patrick’s alphaness that he’d rather suffer alone than risk losing himself.

Fifteen minutes later, hand numb from cold and balls throbbing, Patrick staggered away from the cooling, musk-scented mess on the ground (and the wall and the dumpster). Hips aching, he cleaned up as best as he could and tucked himself back into his jeans.

He didn’t blame the omega one bit. He was just as disgusted with himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> unbeta'd because we don't fight fair.


	5. Kindred Spirits

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Once you get lost the woods, dear boy, the woods get lost in you. One must be careful of the call of the beast's lair to return after escaping it once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Punk rock is a safe haven for all sorts of strangeness, and strangest of them all is Pete Wentz, scene king, cipher, and another mystery for a curious little alpha to unlock, alongside the feral omega whose lair calls to alpha instincts Patrick can't ignore.

Patrick was thinking of the mysterious, feral omega the entire following month. He and Joe practiced, hopping around from basement to attic to rehearsal space, trying to find their sound. They kept getting kicked out of rental spaces when the landlords learned that Joe was an omega. “Look, I don’t want any trouble with the cops,” one landlord said. “This isn’t a place for you to have heats in.”

Patrick scowled at the guy. “He’s got a nest for that, asshole. And an alpha, not that it’s any of your business.” 

“Who? You?” The guy sneered. “Pretending to be an alpha’s illegal, you know.”

“I’m not pretending. Your sense of smell might be better if your head wasn’t up your own ass.” Patrick hefted an amp and curled his own lip in response.

When Andy heard about how Patrick and Joe had been treated, he wanted to visit the landlord. Marie just put a hand on his arm and said, “I’ll take care of it,” and proceeded to tell every band, sound engineer, and club manager that the landlord was a bigot and if any of them rented space from him, they could count out Andy Hurley or Joe Trohman ever playing a venue with them. And by extension, anyone else in Racetraitor, Arma Angelus, or Patterson.

“I hate what they’re doing to omegas,” Marie said to Patrick when he thanked her for what she was doing. “You know, back in the Seventies, this idea of meek omegas and strong alphas wasn’t even a thing.” Marie was studying orientation sociology at U of C and had warned Joe, Andy, and even Patrick that she was eventually going to turn them into research subjects.

For his part, Patrick promised to be a good guinea pig if Marie promised to feed him carrots and clean his cage. He even did guinea pig impressions every so often. “Well, they’re a thing now, aren’t they,” he muttered. “I guess some of us are destined to be freaks.”

“No,” she said firmly. “Alphas who purr and omegas who growl are  _ not  _ freaks. People who want to close up other people into little narrow boxes are the real freaks.”

“My mom says it’s laziness. People who don’t want to have to work hard at relationships or work hard at their jobs use the orientation thing as an excuse. Both for themselves and other people.” Patrick thought of the feral. An omega with a hideout with a sad little nest in an abandoned basement instead of a safe place with their family probably wasn’t there by choice.

 

**

 

Andy joined them at practices between other gigs and finally, there was a show in a club with a busted back door that didn't lock to allow Patrick and Joe to sneak in, and Patrick was finally going to meet Pete Wentz.

The club was loud and foggy from a smoke machine beneath the DJ booth, and loaded up with sweat and pheromones and there was a subtle undernote of sick coming from the bathrooms close to the back where Patrick and Joe snuck in. But as they passed the janitor's closet whose door someone had scrawled an ironic "Green Room" on in sharpie marker, around the scent of the industrial cleaners and old, spilled beer, Patrick detected another whiff of that scent.  _ Not again _ , he thought.

He turned the knob.

"Patrick, what are you doing?" Joe asked. "We can't stay back here, we need to get lost in the crowd."

"I--" He bit his lip. "I thought I smelled--"

"Get out of your nose, dude. You been acting weird for weeks now. Are you high?"

"Get bent, Joe Trohman. I am not high. I'm…confused."

Joe shoved him forward, past the cracked-open door where he could see jumbles of instrument cases and backpacks with junk spilling out, including Andy's recognizable red and gray pack.  _ I'm going crazy _ , Patrick thought.  _ Turning into a knot-head _ .

"The best way to get un-confused is to get fucked up in the crowd." Joe pulled on his hand and they emerged from the back hallway and into the crowded club.

Andy was up there, pounding the skins behind Keith and another guy Patrick didn't recognize. He had dark hair and had smeared his eyes with enough black to make him look like a raccoon. The sound, though, was recognizable from Patrick's CD compilation of local unsigned bands. Patrick found himself in the pit next to Joe, losing sight of the band behind a dozen pairs of shoulders and heads taller than his, but he closed his eyes and just let the sound go through him. The guy he didn't know threw out the lyrics via guttural screams into the mic.

_ I wouldn't have made that choice for those lyrics _ , he caught himself thinking. Scrap the overly-simplified thunder riffs for something a little more melodic and clever, to show that the words weren't just a tantrum thrown by a spoiled child. Patrick threw an elbow and tried to see the band between arms. He caught a glimpse of the singer doing something during a drum solo--taking off a sweatshirt maybe?--and then the pit exploded as the singer dived right into the middle.

Bodies surged around Patrick. Joe threw valiant elbows and hip-checks, trying to rescue his friend, but Patrick found himself caught up in the riptide and sent towards the stage. At the last minute, he lifted his arms because there was a body about to take him down. He held up the singer, staggering under the other man's weight, before the tide shifted again and he could let go and not drop the poor guy.

But there it was again, that maddening scent. In the midst of the BO, the acrid smell of acetone from nail polish remover someone had used to try to scrub the "underage" marker off their hands, and a dozen different brands of make-up, the omega's scent teased him.

_ You're obsessed. You're letting those stupid alpha instincts take over. _ Maybe this was it--late-stage puberty giving him a double fuck-you and saying  _ this is as tall as you get _ and to add insult to injury,  _ you get a defective set of alpha traits that misfire and turn you into a knot-head at the same time _ .

The girl with the acetone was near the bathrooms. Patrick fought the crowd and found her. "Hey, can I have some of that?"

She gave him a look through heavily lined eyes and a fringe of startling red hair. "You don't have a mark."

He held out the corner of his hoodie sleeve. "I got a friend who does. Just--can I have some or not?"

Her bracelets clinked as she tipped the bottle.

The acetone was acrid, but it overpowered the suggestions of the scent--and everything else--for the rest of the night. After the show, he hung around with Joe until the band started breaking down, then they shuffled over.

Joe swept Andy up into a hug. "Dude, awesome!" Then he tugged on Patrick's sleeve and yanked him in a 180 around and away from Keith. "Patrick, dude, this guy-- _ this fuckin' guy _ \--is the one and only Pete Wentz!"

Patrick, still half-behind Joe and sending an apologetic glance towards Keith, with whom he'd been talking, spun around and came face to face with the infamous Pete Wentz and blurted out, "I thought you'd be taller."

Amber eyes swept up and down, sizing him up. Patrick understood why people gravitated towards the infamous Pete Wentz. His mouth set in an appraising twist and Patrick felt weighed, measured, and judged unimpressive.

"This kid doing your music, Joe?" Pete arched an eyebrow and offered a lopsided grin. "You old enough to be out after dark, Lunchbox?"

Patrick crossed his arms. "My name's Patrick. Your sound's not bad, but your songs need a translator."

Pete's grin sharpened to an edge. "You got a problem with my lyrics?" And then he added, with deliberation, "Patty?"

Patrick's eyes narrowed. "Not if you want to keep screaming them into indifferent basements that are half-full and if you're okay with staying cryptic and misunderstood."

Wentz took a step forward. "Yeah? What do you think you can do?" The jut of his chin didn’t reach his eyes. Patrick waited a moment and the sullen expression turned into a smirk that said,  _ make me take you seriously _ .

_ Oh, it's on _ , Patrick thought. He held out his hand, still staring into Pete's eyes. "Joe. Guitar."

Patrick felt, rather than saw, the guitar's neck collide with his hand. He looped the strap over his shoulder. "So you start out that one song with this chugga-chugga riff and you do your lines, but they're all muddy." He changed the driving riff to something more melodic. "Your drumline still has the beat, and the bass can compliment it. You let the guitar do the talking in counterpoint to the line." 

He couldn't scream it the way Pete did, so he sang. "Something something  _ I just knew _ \--something something  _ destroyed you _ \--" All the while, turning the guitar from another layer of heavy beat into music that looped around and bounced off of the lyrics, only half-known to him.

When he stopped, he lifted his head to find complete silence, and Pete staring at him. No longer with the mockery in his assessing gaze, but with something different--both softer and much more predatory. "You just--shook that out of a pant leg?" Patrick glanced down at his pants to make sure nothing  _ had  _ come out of them and felt like an idiot for taking Pete literally. "That was incredible."

Patrick shrugged. "Eh, it's been known to happen." As soon as he said the words, he regretted them when the déjà vu washed over him.

"See?" Joe said, slinging an arm around Patrick's shoulders as he ducked out from under the guitar strap. "I told you you had to meet him, Pete."

Pete stared at Patrick for a long minute. Patrick became aware of his own breathing and the smell of acetone fading. And the hint of the other, omega scent snuck back into his awareness.

Patrick closed his eyes and handed off the guitar, then brought the acetone-soaked sleeve to his face and inhaled.

"Dude, are you okay?"

Pete was looking at him with a strange expression. Andy had finished breaking down his drum kit and moved over to join them, laying an affectionate hand on Joe's shoulder, but displaying none of the protective hover that the presence of alphas not Patrick usually invoked. Instead, Andy buried his head in the crook of Patrick's neck in an uncharacteristically affectionate move.

"Uhh, Andy?" Patrick asked.

"It  _ is  _ you!" Andy lifted his head from Patrick's shoulder and started tugging at his hoodie. "My dude, you stink of chemicals and they offend me. For the love of all you hold sacred, get that thing off before we all burn out our olfactory receptors."

Patrick scowled. "Oh--I, uh, spilled nail polish remover."

"Yeah," Joe muttered. "Everyone in the room can smell it."

Patrick hunched defensively, but he was no match for Andy's grabby hands when Joe got involved. Apparently, the infamous Pete Wentz was never one to miss out on a good dogpile and the three of them wrestled Patrick to the ground and worked the hoodie off him. Andy cast it towards the stack of amps in the back.

"So much better!" He sucked in a deep lungful of air in exaggerated appreciation.

Joe, for his part, was busy laughing at Patrick's argyle sweater. "Dude, a hoodie over a sweater? Aren't you on fire?"

“It’s the middle of fuckin’ winter.” Patrick crossed his arms and curled further up in the fetal position while Joe tried to tickle him back out of it. "Joe, I swear to fuckin' Christ--" He kicked out.

Joe tilted his head, a question in his eyes. "Patrick are you--"

"Fuck  _ off _ , Joe!" He struggled to his feet, catching a whiff not only of the omega scent that seemed like it wanted to fucking  _ look for him _ , but his own growing ripeness that wasn't just sweat from the show.

Andy stepped in. "Patrick, you shouldn't be trying to cover yourself up--"

Patrick fought down the blush (unsuccessfully) and scowled at Andy, who was being uncharacteristically Dad-like. "Can we  _ not? _ " He motioned to Joe and Pete. "In front of the children?"

"Hey, fuck you, I'm twenty-three!"

Andy glanced over at Pete and back to Patrick, nose twitching. "So Pete, we practice on Tuesdays at The Cellar. You in?"

Pete cocked his head. "Fuck yeah, I'm in. But only if he sings." He pointed to Patrick.

"What? No, I--"

"Those are my terms,  _ Lunchbox _ ."

" _ Patrick _ ." He glanced behind them at Keith. "What about Arma?"

Keith wound an amp cord around his arm. "Fuck it. If you want to deal with the Disappearing Wentz, you can have him."

"I love you, too." Pete flipped Keith off, but there didn't seem to be any heat behind it. With the way Keith had been complaining about Pete's disappearances, whatever Arma had been seemed to be drawing to a close.

So the infamous Pete Wentz was going to be joining them. Lah-de-freakin'-dah, Patrick thought. Without the acetone crowding his senses, Patrick's mind wandered back to the feral omega and he found himself worried again, especially over the sad state of that nest. It'd been three and a half weeks, and Patrick had kept silent about his experiences, but if they were going to be rehearsing regularly at the Cellar, and that--that  _ feral _ \--kept his nest in the basement next door, then Patrick was going to be smelling a whole lot more of that scent--maybe even encountering the omega outside of his heat cycle.

Which put him in a position to help.

After Pete and Keith left with the equipment, while Joe and Andy were rounding up Marie, Patrick slipped out into the alley with his backpack. With quick, careful steps and many looks around--he wasn't going to be ambushed again, thank you very much--he slipped back towards the dumpster. The faint traces of omega-scent, mingled with his own-- _ ugh, could I be any more gross _ \--had faded, but were still present near the stairwell leading down.

Patrick made sure to glance upward this time. Satisfied that he was alone, he tried the basement door.

It stuck, but creaked open once he applied a shoulder to it. He pulled the flashlight out of his pack and flicked the switch, half expecting the omega's eyes to reflect the light just before he pounced, but Patrick's sense of being alone had proven true.

The pathetic pile of blankets was still against one wall, though the hoodie had been added to it. With the light, Patrick could see the army blankets, a sleeping bag, a few carpet remnants, and the edge of a tarp underneath, along with a torn t-shirt still partially affixed to the pipes. A Coleman cooler was pushed against a wall, a camp lantern and a tattered book on the lid like a nightstand. Patrick tiptoed towards it and cautiously lifted the lid, praying he wouldn't find something gross like month-old cold cuts or body parts.

The cooler only held bottles of water and a package of shelf stable cheese and crackers lunch packs. He carefully sealed the cooler again and reached into his overstuffed backpack.

In the light, the nest looked even more inadequate. Patrick wondered if he should call social services, but dismissed the thought when he remembered how the city felt about independent omegas having the Sanctuary. The omega clearly didn't live here, judging by the lack of long-term supplies. This was a place he'd chosen to have his heats, judging it to be as safe as he could be.

Patrick knew it was none of his business, but nevertheless, he couldn't--wouldn't--leave the omega so helpless. After that first night, Patrick began collecting what he needed to put his plan in place. He pulled his supplies out now and set to work.

Two patio furniture cushions, pilfered from the neighbors' recycling when they cleaned out their shed for the season. Patrick had to use one of his mom's space bags to crush them down and seal them enough to fit into the backpack.  Around them, he'd tucked old blankets from the garage, a Christmas tree skirt (because it had fringe and some glitter and omegas should feel pretty and special in their nests), and the towels he kept in his car.

Patrick tucked the cushions under the army blanket and duct-taped the tree skirt along the pipes to make a sort of wall hanging. He added his old blankets to the pile, mounding them up until he could make a depression in the center so the omega would feel safe and protected. In the center of the nest, he put his towels, the towels that smelled the most strongly of him.

He'd made a point to use the same three towels over the past three weeks so his scent would be heaviest on them, but clean-scented him, rather than the sweaty version. When he finished arranging the towels, he looked over his handiwork.

The nest still looked sad and thin, like the world didn't care about one forgotten feral omega.  _ I should have brought the tent out of the basement _ , he thought. A nice, cozy tent with a canopy on top, just big enough to sleep two with shelter on top and all sides. Patrick shook his head to clear it of the thoughts.  _ No, that's just going overboard. I'm not his alpha. I'm just helping out _ .

The last thing he left from his backpack was a large package of baby wipes. Joe had once confided that baths made everything better during a heat, even with a bonded alpha around to ease the discomfort, and Marie had asked Patrick to use his alpha nose to help her choose the right essential oils to soothe her boyfriend's over-sensitive body during heats.

He leaned down and breathed in. The visual state of the nest looked sad and incomplete, but the scent told a different story. His scent, mixed with the omega's, sent a powerful shock of possessiveness through him. Patrick was glad the omega wasn't around as he felt his lower back start to burn and heat pool in his hips and a pile of alpha thoughts start to beat a tattoo into his brain.

_ Well, fuck _ . Sweat prickled his scalp as sudden weakness shivered over him. He dropped to his hands and knees in the nest, then collapsed onto his side, letting the mingled scents envelop him. He lost his hat somewhere, but it didn't register until a buzzing from his phone brought him back to himself with a jolt.

_ Holy shit, how long have I been _ \--He checked his phone, then scrambled to his feet.  _ I just spent fifteen minutes rolling myself around in old blankets in a dirty basement. What the fuck is wrong with alpha genes? _ His phone was a text from Joe, asking him why the hell he wasn't at the diner.

_ Craaap! _ Patrick stuffed his mom's space bag back into his backpack, flicked off the flashlight, and staggered to the door of the basement on shaky legs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments give me oxygen. My heart only beats when I get kudos.


	6. The Edge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beneath the safe places, the wild places simply bide their time, waiting for their chance to push up through the cracks in the pavement and remind little alphas that they were once wild things, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's easy to form a bond with your bandmate over your hits. It's harder to come clean about your misses.

* * *

 

At the diner, Joe was already finishing up his pancakes. The sweet aromas of sausage and maple syrup suddenly made Patrick feel like eating everything on the menu, and then maybe fighting Joe and Andy for whatever they had on their plates. "Sorry," he mumbled. "Had to make a quick detour."

Joe offered him a toothy, unrepentant grin. "Rub one out, man?"

Patrick's stupid-alpha voice immediately piped up.  _ Fuck, we should have done that! We have to go back and-- _

_ No! Down! Bad! _ Nevermind that the alpha-asshole attempting to wrest control of his brain functions thought it was an excellent idea to return to the omega's nest and hose it down with spunk--as if rolling around in it for fifteen minutes straight wasn't enough. Instead, he went for the cheap shot. "Yeah, on your mom."

"Dude, my mom's an alpha. She'd eat you for lunch."

Patrick stole the last two bites of sausage from Joe's plate. "I  _ know _ ," he groused.

Andy took mercy on him and changed the subject. "Patrick, are you okay with Pete sitting in on the practices?"

In spite of Andy being a full, properly functional alpha, Patrick never failed to feel calmer in the older man's presence. He nodded. "It couldn't hurt to try him out, y'know. I mean, if anything, he's trying us out, not the other way around. Just…as long as you're confident that he's a good fit."

"And that he doesn't treat us like he treated Arma," Joe interjected.

For his part, Patrick wasn't too concerned with Pete's absences. He would simply write the music so that the bass parts could be covered by a rhythm guitar. They didn't get to practice for two more weeks, but in that time, Patrick had received first one, then a slurry of texts from a new number that he only belatedly worked out as being Pete's. 

Most of them were random observations and non-sequiturs--everything from "Microwaved plastic smells funny," to "Maybe next time I'll remember not to tell you something stupid, but I could be your John Cusack," but many were taking the shape of something more.

Patrick sensed a rhythm to them and slowly began to hum along to texts like "when the moonlight hits your bright eyes, I go blind," even when they were downright snarky. "I got a love letter from her. I corrected the grammar and sent it back."

Pete was "involved" with a girl who went to DePaul with him, but rarely seemed to go out or see him in person, and he'd grown fond of letting Patrick in on the intimate (or long-distance intimate) details (and those details were weird enough that Patrick didn't mind hearing them. Trust  _ Pete  _ to find a way to seduce a girl with agoraphobia). Patrick wondered if she was the reason Pete disappeared from his bands so much. 

One time, Pete called him. Well, more than just one time. They began to talk regularly, if not at regular hours. Patrick often rushed into the day job after these nights, strung out on caffeinated drinks and dragging ass behind him.

Another time, Pete called him the morning he had scheduled to be off work. He'd put it off, but he was too close to a rut to be out in public and had made plans to spend his seclusion sleeping through it as much as possible. But the phone chirped insistently and something made Patrick answer it even as his chest leaped at the display that simply said "Petey."

"She dumped me."

"That's rough, buddy." Patrick's voice was just as rough. He was still in early stages of rut, and could have easily gone out for a few hours with trusted friends in calming environments, but Pete was  _ not  _ a calming environment, even if he was becoming a trusted friend.

"You okay? You sound funny."

"Just…under the weather." Patrick knew he'd have to come clean about being an alpha soon, but he didn't see a need to rush into it--the band hadn't even gotten a practice in yet. If Pete didn't gel with them, he never needed to know. Especially if Pete turned out to be an alpha, too. Patrick would be subject to questions about his lack of adherence to the cliché that he didn't feel like answering. "It'll pass in a few days."

"She's with some alpha from the Concordance Outreach Club."

Patrick scowled, playing the part of the outraged friend. "So she couldn't come up to Wilmette to see you, but she could move her ass out of her dorm for a COC?" Only he sounded out the acronym so it sounded like "cock."

Pete laughed, as Patrick hoped he would.

Pete couldn't stand Concordance Outreach--the organization that worked with the government, businesses, and schools to educate people about their orientations--and made no secret of it. "They're just a bunch of bigoted assholes who want to put people in narrow little boxes," he frequently said and Patrick agreed with him, thinking about Marie and Joe and Andy.

Concordance did good things, like sponsoring classes for students before they manifested, but they also sponsored the Omega Network and its stupid "scent-mates" reality shows about how alphas and omegas found bond-mates not by opening their mouths and talking, or finding people who had the same interests, but just by using scent. Patrick's parents had been scent-compatible, but that hadn't helped them hold a family together, and the same went for a lot of his friends' parents.

"Well I hope she's happy with her knot-head," Patrick said in his snarkiest voice. "Until he gets a stuffed-up nose and the honeymoon's over."

They spent the next few minutes speculating on the idiocy of the unknown alpha. Pete seemed less and less of an alpha himself, unless he was an anomaly like Patrick. Patrick only hoped that it wouldn't seem like lying just because Patrick didn't mention his own orientation.

They were laughing together over the insults of the hapless new alpha in Pete's ex's life and finally subsided to occasional spurts of giggling when Pete said, "She said he was well-hung."

To which Patrick replied, "aaaand I'm hanging up."

*

Two days later, Pete called again. Patrick really hoped he didn't have another romantic crisis because Patrick was in the middle of rut. While it wasn't a terrible rut--not like the first, adolescent, painful, irregular ruts that had him drenched in sweat and spunk for a full week, and shame before and after no matter what Concordance classes had said about being normal, healthy, and natural--Patrick was not at his most coherent.

Turned out that neither was Pete, though. "Can't sleep," Pete muttered over the phone, the open connection humming gently between them. "Sometimes happens."

Patrick put a pillow over his chest so the rumble coming from it would be muffled enough not to come over the phone line. He cleared his throat but his voice still came out hoarse and a little lower than his usual register. "How often?"

"Often enough," Pete mumbled. "Can't--can't shut off my brain." There was a thread, a resonance, a vocal fry that Patrick's ears barely picked up, but registered nonetheless. It went straight to his midsection, stinging at the base of his spine. To his horror, he started to purr.

"Patrick? What's that noise?"

Patrick struggled to form words.  _ Excuse! I need an excuse! _ "Uhh--amp. I-I'm--fixing it?"  _ Great, Patrick. Way to sell it. _ He forced his brain away from the thrum in his throat. "What--how can I help?"

Pete was silent while the line hummed and Patrick's purr thrummed and his pulse beat a steady drumbeat radiating out from the base of his spine. Rut was telling him to go find something to hold down and bite and fuck. Pete's voice--the things he wasn't saying--was telling him to go find  _ Pete _ . And what? Hold him down and bite him and fuck him?  _ Bad Patrick! Very bad Patrick! _

He counted himself lucky in that alpha ruts were much less debilitating than omega heats. At least in rut, he still retained enough sense to carry on a conversation, even if his scent and behavior--and the perpetual, raging hard-on--would not be appropriate for public consumption.

"S'funny, but that amp feedback is kind of relaxing," Pete said. "But what would really help is if you'd sing to me?"

"S-sing to you?"

"Yeah." Pete's voice went throaty again to Patrick's ears, and Patrick could almost feel the desperation over the phone line. "Your voice is…when you just…sang the night we met, it was like turning on a light inside my brain."

Patrick's purr thickened. He flopped on his stomach to try to suppress it in the bedcovers and the mattress beneath. "Oh, Pete. I'm not that good."

"Yeah. Yeah you are. Sing?"

Patrick set his phone to speaker and the tinny sound of Pete's breathing filled his ears. He started to sing, something Motown, to make up for his voice wanting to pitch lower thanks to the rut hormones. Something slow, with a simple chorus and four-line verses. Something that covered up his purr the way the pillow and the pressure from the mattress under his chest and hips just weren't doing.

When the song was over, Pete began to talk. "I--thank you, Patrick." His voice cracked and Patrick could hear the tears, even through the tinny speaker. "So I guess you should know. This happens to me, sometimes. I--I take medication for it, but sometimes--I don't always--it messes with my systems, y'know? Makes me…more  _ broken _ ."

"Pete, no," Patrick said, a thread in his voice firm. "You're  _ not  _ broken."

Pete laughed with no humor. "You don't know me very well yet, Trick."

Almost without conscious awareness, Patrick's hips had begun to move in the bedclothes. The pillow obviously wasn't a partner, but his body told him it was close enough. Without trying to overthink what he was doing, he pulled a knotting sleeve out of his bedside drawer and shifted to his side just enough to roll it down his aching cock. He kept his hand close as his hips picked up speed. "I know you well enough," he muttered. "Everyone in the scene knows you."

"Yeah, I destroyed more bands than anybody else."

Patrick struggled for words. As good as his hand over the sleeve felt, hearing Pete's voice, even if he hated Pete's terrible words about himself, was doing something to him. "You built them first," he ground out. "You got them gigs, put the right--people together--"

"I talk a lot," Pete said. "I talk a lot, and I talk a good game and I make promises and they never--"

The despair in Pete's voice twisted tight behind Patrick's ribcage. "That's not true," he said, helplessly rutting into the mattress and desperately wanting Pete's voice to draw away from the edge of the abyss that made it sound so hollow. "You  _ believe _ , Pete."

"I…believe?"

Patrick's fingers twisted in the bedsheets. The flexible silicone sleeve rolled up and down the length of his cock. His jaw ached with the need to bite something and he buried his face into the pillow for a second. "You believe. In the music. In the people. That's--" he shuddered. He could barely hear himself over his own purr. "That's amazing."

"You--you really think that, don't you?" Pete's voice softened. The dark, hollow pain in it seemed to lighten, just a shade, but it was enough to make Patrick feel like he was seeing the moon come out from behind heavy clouds. His world narrowed down to the sleeve, the heat of his hand, and Pete's voice. "Patrick, you're the one who's amazing."

Patrick's eyes fluttered shut. His purr swelled, filling his throat and making his back teeth ache. The sleeve slipped over his knot--as it was designed to do--and Pete's voice carried him over the edge. "You have no idea. This band--we're gonna go places."

"Nnghghgnngghh." Patrick turned his head before he suffocated himself. The spreading pool of jizz beneath him was soaking through his comforter. Streaks of dull pain shot through his hips and around to the base of his spine as his knot pulsed inside the snug sleeve. It wasn't a perfect solution to alpha ruts, but at least it eased the pain of not having an omega.

"Patrick? Did you just electrocute yourself? Jesus, that amp is trashed. I don't think you're fixing it."

Patrick found a towel and mopped weakly as his muscles slowly relaxed from the twisting tension of rutting. "Fuck the amp," he grunted. "Did I fix you?"

Pete hummed affirmative. "Nobody can fix me, Lunchbox. But you taped me back together for a little while. I won't forget it."


	7. Wild Thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A wild thing may be a simple creature of few needs, but be wary of thinking it will be so easily tamed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The band stutters to a start, while Pete and Patrick's friendship grows closer. An alpha without a growl doesn't mean an alpha without an opinion, and Patrick has strong ones, especially in light of the citywide attempts to control unclaimed omegas. Some opinions, unpopular as they may be, are worth fighting for.

Pete started practices with them the following week. Patrick showered twice before going over, just in case some of the lingering rut-scent clung to him. In the meantime, he stowed a pillowcase and two more towels in another space bag (this time to seal them, rather than shrink them down) and slunk off to the unknown feral omega's nest. His scent in rut would add to the alpha-sign around the sorry little nest and keep the omega safe without Patrick having to be there.

He also set a small box of omega heat-pads next to the cooler. Yes, the omega was a guy, but fuck those asshole knot-heads who scorned the product as something for women or children. Nobody wanted to walk around with sodden underwear when their heat pounced on them. 

Patrick's mother sniffed at that nonsense.  _ It's just lazy alphas who are looking to take advantage of unsuspecting omegas when their heats come unexpectedly _ . Heat-pads came with disposable plugs that would help soothe an omega's cravings and keep the pheromone-rich slick their bodies produced from leaking everywhere, the pads protected clothing, and the combination would allow an unclaimed omega to be comfortable in less-than-ideal circumstances.

The alpha-holes in society protested this, of course. Nothing worked a good growl out of Mrs. Stump's throat more than alpha efforts to curtail omega activities, and Patrick had adopted her stance, especially after he matured.

Patrick noticed that the nest itself hadn't been disturbed since he last brought towels and blankets and-- _ and rolled around in it like an itchy dog _ . He laid out the pillowcase and the towels in the center of the nest and tried not to think about the implications of what he was doing.

If any other alpha were to come by, they'd scent the omega and Patrick, mingling together. Patrick's scent would grow stronger the closer to the nest, sending an unmistakable message.  _ This omega is not for you _ outside the door.  _ There is a defender here to face your challenge _ inside the basement room. And the rut-scent in the middle of the nest said  _ this omega is mine _ .

Patrick questioned the wisdom of his own actions. He was staking a claim without really staking a claim, but the omega had definitely not seemed interested in being claimed. He told himself he was just helping someone out. And if he stopped to breathe in the omega's scent mingled with his own with his eyes closed and let a warm curl of satisfaction wriggle through his midsection, well, that was just getting off on being a decent guy.

 

*

 

Patrick hadn't minded singing when it was just to Pete on the phone, in the middle of his melancholia, but when Pete proposed it at the beginning of practice, Patrick balked. And Joe, the traitor, backed him up. Andy simply patted his shoulder. "You've been singing our songs for awhile, Patrick. What's the problem?"

The problem, he had to admit, was Pete. Without Pete, they were…okay. They were still finding their sound, they were a work in progress, and Patrick didn't have to admit that as a trio they…weren't enough. But adding Pete gave them--oddly enough, given his personality--stability. The band was a hobby, a lark, until Pete Wentz put his hand in it. They hadn't played a note together yet, but somehow Pete's very presence made it real.

Patrick squinted up at Pete. "Listen," he said with a mouth dry as the desert. He motioned to Joe and Andy. "I--we're serious. If you're going to flake on us--"

Andy put a hand on Patrick's shoulder. "Pete's not going to flake. He's going to  _ communicate _ , and warn us ahead of time when he has to go away for a bit."

"Just relax, Tricky." Pete bared a mouthful of too many teeth and leaned in close. "I can take your little project places you can't even imagine." He drew in a breath, the laugh already forming on his face--

And froze, staring hard at Patrick.

Patrick froze in kind. "What?"

"Andy," Pete said, "Is this some kind of joke?"

"Not in front of the children, Pete. We'll talk."

Patrick frowned. "It's not funny when  _ I'm _ the children. What gives?"

Pete scowled suddenly, and backed away from Patrick like he was on fire. "Andy you  _ said _ . You  _ promised! _ "

"My word is good, Pete. Let's talk upstairs."

Pete narrowed his eyes at Patrick. "No. Outside."

Patrick's stomach dipped. Pete's mood had flashed from bright and easygoing to wary and antagonistic and it had everything to do with him.

Andy nodded and opened the door to the back patio. Pete, giving Patrick a wide berth, followed, leaving Patrick and Joe sharing confused looks.

Andy and Pete returned a few minutes later. Andy took up residence behind the drum kit and a subdued Pete donned his bass and wore it like a shield, keeping to the opposite side of the room from Patrick. Patrick turned back to Andy, who nodded at him and said quietly, "Let's try the new one."

Patrick turned to Pete. "Okay, the bass-tabs are--"

Pete stepped back the moment Patrick leaned towards him. "I  _ know  _ what the bass tabs are. I came here to play, not fuck around."

After the practice, Patrick caught up to Pete at his car. "Pete, what's going on?" The air was starting to move from "crisp" into "tuck your nuts up under your belly button" and Patrick shivered in his doubled-up hoodie. Chicago had been gifted with a mild winter through Thanksgiving, but the city’s luck might be running out. Patrick tried not to think about the abandoned basement, especially now, when Pete was so twitchy around him.

Pete backed away and held out a hand. "Nothing. Forget it. I'm cool. You're gonna sing, right?" He fiddled with the handle on his instrument case.

Patrick shoved his hands in his pockets. The bassist wouldn't look at him and he wondered if he'd fucked things up the other night. "Yeah, I'm gonna sing. And you're not gonna bail on us like you did with Arma, right?"

Pete opened his car door and slid his bass into the backseat before answering. When he turned back to Patrick, he kept the car door between them and narrowed his eyes. "You bring it, I'll bring it."

Patrick tilted his chin up and he thought he might be hearing "Pete From Arma" and "Pete From Racetraitor" and "Pete With The Reputation" talking through that. He widened his stance just a bit and stiffened his shoulders. "As long as you can keep up."

Pete lifted an eyebrow and waited a long moment before letting his breath out in a huff. "Hm. Typical." He ducked into the car and slammed the door shut. Through the cracked-open window, he said, "See you around, Tricky."

*

As it turned out, Pete did  _ not  _ "see him around." Patrick had to drag him out.

Six days before their first show as a quartet, Pete's long, rambling texts full of lyrics dried up. Patrick fretted, thinking it was the email he'd finally sent of himself, strumming some basic guitar chords and singing Pete's lyrics into his shitty computer microphone that drove Pete away. So he called.

"Hey," he said when Pete answered the phone with a grunted, "Fuckin' what?"

Patrick listened carefully. Pete's tone didn't hold the hollow desperation that it had the few other times when he'd called and needed Patrick to sing his brain into a quiet place. Instead, there was a rough, almost dangerous edge to it. "I just wanted to check on you. Your texts stopped coming."

"I have a mom already, thanks."

"Fuck you, too, asshole." Patrick wondered why he bothered. Pete was an adult, technically if not behaviorally sometimes, given his belief that candy was a food group. "I'm going down to the Java Bean. They've got some acoustic sets. You wanna come with?"

"Are you…asking me out?" Pete's voice turned playful.

Patrick was not fooled. "Asking you to  _ step out _ of that pit you call an apartment, yes. Where we will proceed, in each other's company, to a place where caffeinated beverages are consumed publicly, for the purposes of consumption of said beverages and to listen to live musicians play music that may be better than ours." Which was his roundabout way of asking if Pete had listened to the demo he sent.

"Would you buy me one of those humongous cinnamon rolls?"

"One might find its way into our vicinity. If we're fast enough and we work together, I bet we can separate a weak one from the herd and bring it down."

Pete laughed. "All right, Lunchbox, you talked me into it. One set, though, then I gotta go."

"Oh, you double-dipping on me with another hot date?"

"Heh. Yeah. She's super-hot, at least on the inside, and makes my pants tight. I call her Maytag."

Patrick sputtered out laughing when he realized he'd been had and Pete's new "girlfriend" was the dryer. "At least she takes quarters and not dollar bills."

"Yeah, and her sister has a spin cycle that'll shake your booty."

"You send away for terrible puns, don't you?" Patrick shook his head even though Pete couldn't see him through the phone. "You belong to a club, am I right? They send you a new bunch every month and they get worse over time?"

Pete gave an exaggerated "muhaha" laugh. "They're my favorite form of Stump torture. I love to hear you squeal."

He picked up Pete outside his apartment and bought a cinnamon roll at the cafe, as promised.

Pete had agreed to come out with him, but he wasn't in the most social of moods. He alternated between sitting up and looking alert--almost manic--as his eyes flicked around the room and his foot tapped in time to the music, and hunching down in his seat with his hoodie up over his head.

Over the strong scents of coffee and pastry, and the sounds of a mellow guitarist with a halfway-nice voice and zero stage presence--someone Patrick could keenly relate to--he worked up the courage to ask Pete if he'd gotten the email yet. It was at one of those Pete-being-quiet times when Patrick reached across the table and tapped the back of Pete's hand. "So, uh."

Pete glanced up through the tops of his eyes. A half-hearted eyebrow-raise stood in for speech and Patrick powered through. "I sent you an email thing. With a new song. I took some of your texts and, well--if you're okay with me using your words, then we can start rehearsing it at practice."

Pete took the paper wrapper from the cinnamon roll and folded it into a pie wedge that grew more misshapen with every fold, squeezing the crumbs and cinnamon goo left over from the pastry out onto the table and his fingertips. "I got it loaded up in my iPod. Haven't listened to it yet, though." Pete shifted in his seat. "Brain's not…quite in the right place right now." He wiped his fingers on his jeans and scrubbed at his face. "It's not you," he said quickly. "I want to be at my best when I hear it. Make sure I'm on my game so we don't, I dunno, confuse our sound."

At his best, Pete had the fidgets. This was not Pete at his best. Patrick was coming around to being able to read the band's newest member well enough to know his brain was going maybe a little too fast for him right now.  _ I should not have given him sugar _ . "Hey, stay here for a sec? I'm hungry and they have one of those little pizzas. Split one with me?" He wondered when was the last time Pete had eaten real food.

Pete shrugged. Patrick knew he wouldn't say no to pizza, but that didn't mean he wouldn't have to talk Pete into it. "Watch my bag," Patrick instructed, more to keep Pete anchored to the floor than anything else.

A few minutes later, he came back with the pizza, heated up and smelling delicious, and placed a slice on a napkin directly in front of Pete. "Eat."

Pete rolled his shoulders and tilted his head from side to side. The musician ended and the pop of Pete's neck cracking was audible enough in the sudden silence for Patrick to wince as he bit into his own slice.

The musician started another song and Patrick glanced around. The crowd had shifted to a later mix--fewer high schoolers and college students, but more professionals. Suddenly, he and Pete weren't on the older side of the crowd, and the music reflected that, switching to something moody and plaintive.

The girl crooned the cover of a popular love song about-- _ ugh _ , "The Scent of You."  _ More like the Earworm that Eats the Brains of You _ . Patrick registered her vocal range shifting a bit higher and he already knew she'd have to stretch to reach the original song's high notes. "This song needs to die," he grumped.

Pete flicked a glance in his direction. He'd taken a few bites of pizza. "It always makes top ten lists for romantic shit."

Patrick scowled. "They got the shit part right. I just get so sick of being told that nothing matters about your romantic partner except that their B.O. smells good. They could be a total dick or a serial killer, but if their ass smells okay then they're the one for you."

Pete's eyebrows went up. "I'd have thought--nevermind." Something must have shown on Patrick's face to make him clam up.

"I want to know the  _ people  _ I sleep with, not just their asses." And maybe he was ranting now. Pete was starting to lean away from him. Patrick shrugged sheepishly.

"Most of the people I sleep with  _ are  _ asses." Pete leaned his elbows on the table. "And if they aren't, I don't wanna know."

Patrick knew Pete's reputation--disappearing with pretty scene girls and twinky scene guys at shows, a dozen different stories about someone who knew someone who'd been with Pete Wentz. And the stories were never the same. Pete was a beta, he knotted like an alpha, he bit some girl once and almost drew blood, he was a vampire, a beast in bed, the best you'd never have because he slipped away long before anyone could stake a claim, either metaphorical or physiological.

_ I want something better for you _ .

"My decision, isn't it?"

"What?" Patrick returned Pete's frown with a confused one of his own.

"You just said--"

Patrick realized he'd spoken aloud. "I--yeah, of course. Why wouldn't it be your call?"

Pete shoved his chair back and stood. "That's a nice fairy tale to believe."

Patrick moved to chase after him. "Pete wait!"

The room was starting to fill and someone had turned the lights down for that stupid song. The singer went into another moony love song about scent-mates only this one had a more complex melody to it, with a hook that screamed "hit."

But Pete was good at being slippery and by the time Patrick wrestled his backpack off the chair where the straps had tangled, Pete was gone, leaving nothing but the vague scents of cinnamon and marinara in his wake.

Patrick texted him at least a dozen times before receiving a terse reply.  _ OK. Had to go. Sry _ .

That night after Patrick had to get his car jump-started in the parking lot because the weather turned colder and he drove home without detouring to the unknown omega’s crash space, Patrick dreamed he was back in the abandoned basement, tied to the pipes again, but this time, the omega wanted to feed him pizza and cinnamon rolls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> holler at me over on tumblr (my asks are open) if you have questions about the universe here.


	8. With the Pack

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The wolf at the edge of the wood walks between two worlds, belonging to neither.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Mysteries of Pete are still riddles wrapped in enigmas, and if the band doesn't gel before their first show, it may be their last, and Patrick, Joe, and Andy just another few casualties of the collision between the Potential of Pete and the Reality.

Their next practice happened at the Cellar. When Patrick arrived, Andy lifted his head. "No Pete today. He texted me earlier."

"Oh." Patrick's shoulders sagged.  _ Why didn't he text me? _ In fact, Patrick hadn't even heard from Pete about the song he sent, and he was beginning to wonder if Pete had listened to it and decided their band was a mistake. That  _ Patrick  _ was a mistake.

Patrick would have canceled the practice, but they'd be fools to pass up practice time at the Cellar where there was a sound board and always a few engineers willing to fuck around with your sound to make it better. Bob was there and a little flock of junior engineers were hanging on to his every word like a bunch of grungy birds in band tees, making the lone female in the business suit among them stand out even more.

Patrick's nose twitched. "Hey Andy," he murmured, "You think that lady's anybody we should pay attention to?"

Andy, who had been in the scene longer than Patrick and Joe, narrowed his eyes and carefully avoided looking directly at the woman. "Maybe. Just focus on the music. It's not going to matter if she's watching us or not--it's the audience that counts when we play gigs, right?"

"Yeah," Joe nodded. "I've been working on a new cover," he said. "Digging up old stuff from way back. I think we could make something out of the Sex Pistols' 'Anarchy in the UK.'"

Patrick cocked his head. "You think you can sing, too? I don't know if I have the range." Out of the corner of his eye, he watched the blonde woman stride towards Marcus's office and shake his hand before going inside.

"You do," Joe said. "But it'd be fun to sing it together."

In spite of no Pete, they had a good practice. Bob clapped when they made it through the song the first time. Joe had set up his phone to record the song and sent it to Pete. The bartender and the dishwasher clapped for them when they finished their final run-through. And when they were done packing up their gear, Marcus stuck his head out of the office.

"You guys have anything to do Friday night? My opener bailed and we have a spot." 

Behind him, the woman stepped out of the office. She tilted her head and eyed the three of them while tucking a small bottle into her briefcase.

"We're in," Joe said before anyone else could object. Not that Patrick would, and not that Andy would, either.

The woman spoke. "You should play that one in your line-up. I like that one." She made it sound like a command.

Joe ducked his head. "Thank you, ma'am."

Patrick felt like telling her a flat-out "no," but attributed it to being nervous. Andy shifted closer to Joe.

The woman nodded to Marcus. "Thank you. Our people will be in touch."

Marcus nodded and watched her walk out the same way Patrick and Andy watched her, until he turned and caught them watching. "Hey, cellar-dwellers. Eyes front."

Patrick straightened. "We weren't--" His blush crept all the way up to the roots of his hair.

Marcus laughed. "You got good instincts, kid. But any time they start talking about 'their people,' check that gut."

Patrick frowned. "What do you mean?"

Andy answered for him. "He means that 'their people' are probably lawyers." He slung an arm around Joe's shoulders. "Let's get out of here. I'm hungry."

 

Patrick texted Pete the good news but got no response. He continued texting Pete through the week and felt a little weird--the shoe was on the other foot now, with Patrick sending words into the void instead of Pete doing it while Patrick was asleep.

Pete didn't show for their next two practices. Patrick and Joe had begun talking quietly about Patrick taking the bass part, or maybe rehearsing a version of the cover songs that used rhythm guitar to fill in the bass notes. 

Joe's shoulders slumped when they took their places after all the instruments were hooked up. "I guess…count us in, Andy."

Patrick waited to hear the clack of Andy's drumsticks, but when nothing came, he turned around to find the other alpha wearing a troubled expression. Patrick lifted the strap of his guitar over his head and motioned to Joe to do the same. "Hey Andy? Something bothering you?"

Andy tightened a wingnut on one of his cymbals. "Don't worry about Pete, okay? He's with us."

"In spirit doesn't count if I need him to play a part," Patrick said, an edge to his voice. Part of it was worry, but the other part was annoyance. An annoyance with the older bassist that came from hurt.  _ We aren't enough _ . I'm  _ not enough to keep his interest _ .

"Pete's not bailing on us." He fished his phone out of his bag and waved it. "He texted me that he wasn't going to be available until probably Thursday, but he'll definitely be fine come Friday."

"Is he sick?" Patrick didn't want to ask if it was Pete's mental state because that was rude and unfair, but Pete's disappearance from the café still smarted. Especially since Pete hadn't bothered to reply or respond to Patrick's questions about the demo he'd sent. Something in the deep core of where Patrick lived was slowly splitting in two over that. He knew his demo was good. His music was good. The way he'd put Pete's words together made  _ sense _ . Sense enough that he felt it under his skin like an itch.

Andy pretended great interest in his foot pedal. 

"Andy?" Joe's tone held a warning. "Something you wanna tell us about Pete?"

"Nothing that's mine to tell." Andy lifted his chin. "Let it be, Joe."

Joe frowned at his bonded alpha. "And if I refuse? Dude, this matters. If we blow it right out of the gate, we're over before we even had a chance."

Andy rose from the stool. "Joe," he said, his voice more quiet than usual, and that was saying something.

Patrick cleared his throat, swallowing down the purr that wanted out to soothe the sudden tension between his two best friends. "Andy, maybe we should re-think playing gigs for awhile. Until Pete gets his--whatever it is he's dealing with--straightened out. Joe has a point."

Andy stepped forward, this time towards Patrick. Patrick twitched because it felt like a challenge and Andy would never do that.

But Andy closed his eyes and took in a deep breath. He exhaled and Patrick could scent the faint notes of alpha pheromones around the same time that Joe lifted his head, suddenly alert.

Patrick found himself standing between an agitated alpha and his bondmate and the pheromones overcame his control over his vocalizations. "A-andy?" The purr crept up and around his drummer's name and Patrick felt his skin grow warm and prickly.

"Patrick, maybe you should head out?" Joe said, a thready quaver to his voice.

Patrick reached for his guitar case. It spilled open with extra sheet music, a few old cut-up t-shirt rags and a half-opened pack of strings. Patrick scooped up the detritus and flung it into the case and was about to rise when he felt Andy behind him.  _ Looming  _ over him. Andy never  _ loomed _ .

Patrick bristled. "Andy, think about what you're doing."

Andy hardly ever fought. Not because he was bad at it, but because he was very, very good at it. Patrick hardly ever fought because he was very, very good at starting fights, but not so great at finishing them. Plus, he didn't like to fight. His instincts didn't see other alphas as threats until those other alphas made themselves threatening. He'd never seen Andy as a threat, because Andy never  _ behaved  _ as a threat. Not even when Joe's heat was coming around.

Joe's voice washed over him. "Andy. Come on, man. This isn't you. This isn't even you in rut, man. What's going on?"

Andy's voice, not accustomed to growling, came out rough for the soft-spoken drummer. "I don't--I shouldn't be even close to rut."

"It's okay, dude. I got you," Joe's soothing murmurs seemed to calm Andy and Patrick breathed a little easier because of it. "Fuck biology, man. This is bullshit," Joe muttered. "Hey, Andy, let's get out of here you and me. Go to the nest and just chill? I'll call Marie and let her know we're coming?"

Andy cleared his throat several times before speaking. "S-sure. Patrick, I-I'm sorry, I don't know what--"

Patrick finally turned. "Hey, man. It's cool." He swallowed around his purr, which was refusing to stop unless he straight-up held his breath. "I'll clean up here, then. You two--Joe, figure out what's off. If we can't get our shit together for the show, we'll have to cancel."

"Fuck biology," Joe muttered again, wrapping his arm around Andy's shoulders.

Patrick heartily agreed.

**

Andy’s inexplicable rut came and went in the space of a day. Joe called Patrick from the Joe-den Friday at lunchtime--Patrick could hear the sound system in the background and Marie’s voice ordering Joe to finish his tea and Andy to start the laundry because it was his turn. “Yeah, it was this mini-rut thing. Andy’s body just started dumping hormones into his system. Thank God my mom’s a nurse. She came over and did a stick and he’s fine, but there was something environmental.” Marie said something in the background and Joe’s voice faded before returning. “She says you should probably get a stick-check, too, just in case.”

“I’m not--” Normal, he was going to say.

But there was a shuffling on the other end of the line and Marie came on. “Yes you are, Patrick. I’m bringing one of Joe’s mom’s extras to the venue tonight and I will stick it in your arm if I have to hold you down myself, understand?”

Patrick gulped. “Okay, but are you sure you’re a beta?”

“Labels are bullshit, Patrick.” She hung up after that, but Patrick had no answer anyway.

Patrick and Joe had set up everything except the cord to plug in Pete's bass. Patrick and Joe shared a look that said,  _ I don't think he's coming _ and Patrick could see his own disappointment reflected in Joe's expression.

But then Pete appeared at the back door, ten minutes before they were due to go on, looking like he'd been run over and run through a car wash. His hair stuck up in eight different directions and he smelled as if he'd been sleeping in a dumpster--and Patrick refused to think of the last thing  _ he  _ did near a dumpster,  _ thankyouverymuch _ \--but his eyes burned with something dangerous when he clapped his hands, rubbed them together, and said, "Let's fucking do this."

Pete picked up the line and plugged it into his bass, then turned back. "You fuckers coming or am I playing this show myself?"

Andy shook his head. "Fucking-- _ your brain _ , Pete."

"Hey now."  _ What about Pete's brain? _ Patrick wanted to ask. He felt protective about Pete's brain and if Pete was a little cracked in the nut, then Andy, of all people, should not be blaming it for anything. "Hey, Pete?"

Pete turned. Patrick felt Joe move up behind him and beside him, Andy stopped. Patrick looked at each of them. "Are we all in on this?" His fingers were sweating against his guitar pick.

Pete put his pick between his teeth and put a hand out, palm down.

Andy shifted his drumstick to the other hand and placed his hand on top of Pete's. 

Joe followed, lacing his fingers through Andy's. "All in, man."

Patrick put his hand out last. He met each of their eyes again. "All in."

Their first show, predictably, sucked. Andy was still agitated enough that he rushed the fast songs and Patrick had to slur the lyrics to keep up with him. Joe dragged behind, still too mellow from Andy's rut to summon the energy to keep up. Patrick was flailing desperately and wished he'd insisted on having the second guitar, because maybe a few extra riffs would even out the weird energy on the stage, with the three of them in their separate bubbles.

Patrick's nose wasn't doing anything to help, either. There was something wrong with the air circulators in the Cellar and every breath he took in came with a cacophony of alpha pheromones that coated his tongue like two-day-old take-out. His instincts wanted him back against the wall and crouched waiting to fend off an attack. His voice kept creeping down into the lower registers and the purr that was the only growl he was capable of kept trying to work its way out. And he kept trying to make eye contact with people in the front row, which was putting them at odds instead of at ease.

To top it all off, the bar was offering dime drafts of shitty, watered-down beer, and serving it in plastic cups. So when the cups started flying, they were full of beer, and the crowd was full of people with uncanny aim. Patrick dodged two cups but ran right into the third and switched from singing to screamo on the last lyric as the cold, sticky liquid drenched him. Globs of foam ran down his hairline into his ears and down his neck into his shirt collar. Fuck, that was almost a full cup.  _ They hate me. I should never have agreed to sing _ .

They should have done the Ramones' "I wanna be sedated" instead of "Anarchy in the UK."  _ Maybe the audience would fucking chill _ , Patrick thought.

He glanced over at Pete and the bassist's grin disappeared. His lip curled up into a snarl and he strutted over to the middle of the stage to stand in front of Patrick. They didn't pause to talk to the crowd--Andy just counted them into the next song, which Patrick missed because he was still guzzling water for his throat and trying to mop gross beer out of his eyebrows.

It was Pete who ended up saving the day. Sure, he struggled through the newer stuff, but just as Patrick sensed they were going to lose the crowd--that the frantic thrashing was going to lose its rhythm and go straight to anger--Pete climbed the stack of amps along one side of the stage, microphone in hand, and began to scream along to the lyrics Patrick was trying to sing.

The crowd surged towards that side of the room, sensing potential blood. Pete stared out over the crowd. "You motherfuckers wanna tear into something? Try it with me!" And the crazy motherfucker turned around and fell backward off the amp stack.

Another cup sailed onto the stage, knocking Patrick in the back of the head and baptizing him with beer again, this time down the back of his jacket. Patrick felt the room fade out to black. He must have kept his lips moving and his voice going because when he came back, the room was still there and all eyes were on Pete.

Who reclined on his back atop a wave of eager hands as if he were floating in a goddamn kiddie pool.  _ Even when they hate us, they love him _ .

They ended the set with that song--a popular cover of a classic, pre-changewave song from the Buzzcocks, Pete's bass picking up midway through the first verse and the classic settling the crowd enough for them to duck through the side of the stage to the manager's office.

Pete and Joe, inexplicably, were laughing, clutching each other like battle brothers and crowing. "That was awesome!" Joe yelled.

"It  _ was _ , dude!"

Patrick, still dripping on the sticky floor and making it stickier, stared at the two lunatics. "Is that what awesome feels like? Because it feels like 'we suck' to me." He was soaked to the skin, stunk like bad beer and sour sweat, and was pretty sure he reeked of Eau de Fail on top of it.

Pete stopped hugging on Joe and met Patrick's eyes with a topaz gaze that sobered right up. "Patrick, you were amazing out there." Pete came closer and put a hand on Patrick's sopping shoulder. "The worst thing that can happen isn't that the crowd throws beer at you. It's that the crowd ignores you."

"Yeah," Joe said. "You're covered in their attention. Their warm, smelly, sticky attention."

Pete ducked his head until Patrick had no choice but to meet his amber eyes. "Joe's right. They couldn't ignore us and they never will again."

"Pete," Patrick said slowly, for his clearly challenged friend. "They  _ hated  _ us. Threw  _ beer  _ at us. At  _ me _ . We  _ sucked _ . We couldn't keep time, I slurred my words, missed my cues--"

"Shush-shush-sh-sh-shusshhhhh." Pete clapped a hand that smelled like stringed instrument and dirt over Patrick's mouth. "None of that matters. We did it, and we'll do it again." Pete's eyes were shining, even as he pushed the meat of his grungy hand against Patrick's teeth. "Next time will be better, and the one after that, even better still. You're the golden ticket, man. I can even forgive you for--"

The door to the office slammed open. "Okay, boys. Time to go. Clear out your stuff." Marcus came bursting through the door. "There's pizza waiting for you at the back entrance."

"Awesome!" Joe hopped off the desk and tugged on Patrick's wet hoodie. "Let's go, dude. We can suck the beer out of Patrick's shirt, too."

"Ugh, gross!" Andy shoved Joe with affection.

Patrick stumbled backwards, seeking Pete's eyes again. What did he mean, "forgive?"  _ What did I do? _


	9. Secrets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whisper your secrets into the woods, sweet boy, and the wind will whisper them back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Patrick's has no claim on the feral but that doesn't keep the unconventional alpha from falling victim to a few very conventional assumptions about his orientation

 

* * *

Patrick's unsettled feeling didn't go away at the next practice or the week they took off for Christmas. Mindful of the holiday, he scuttled away from his family feeling like a thief when he wouldn't tell his mom where he was going or where the extra towels kept disappearing to. "Donations, Mom."

He didn't correct her assumption that they were going to the omega shelter, but he passed right by the omega symbol inside the Concordance "C" logo and the huge sign that said, "Scent-processing required for admittance," because he knew both Marie and Andy's rants by heart now. 

_ Invasion of privacy. They force omegas to register and then bond them to alphas based on scent markers alone _ . Patrick already knew firsthand how much of a clusterfuck that turned out to be. The alpha dormitory around the block was no better.  _ Sure, they bust up an independent omega sanctuary, but let the alpha dorms be used for alphas to troll for omegas who couldn't go anywhere else besides the shelter _ .

The lonely-looking basement nest had been used, he could smell it as soon as he shoved open the door. The omega scent no longer hit him like a bag of bricks-- _ thank God _ \--but he sensed it there, feeling like a now-familiar tickle in the back of his brain that he only realized was missing when it returned.

The blanket pile still held the hoodie Patrick had worn the first night he'd been tackled. The rest of the nest was still a mess. Patrick picked up the food wrappers and stuffed them in his pockets to throw away later, then folded the newspapers, trying not to see the headlines that talked about the Sanctuary Coalition's protest outside City Hall, demanding a vote for the rights of omegas to maintain an independent sanctuary within city limits.

Patrick left the omega some towels and a memoir of Chicago's early punk rock history written by a guy Patrick's dad knew who ran a recording studio off Cicero when the changewave first came through.

This time, he also left a note.  _ "I hope you're safe. Happy New Year." _ He didn't sign his name.

Pete dragged them all together for a New Year's celebration at his shitty apartment where the beer flowed and the sense took a holiday. At four am on New Year's Day, Patrick found himself at the bottom of a puppy-pile that consisted of the tangle of Joe and Andy (after Marie had long since departed "leaving them in their own filth" with instructions not to come home wearing anything that stank of vodka or vomit,  _ and if Patrick thought that peeing in Joe's shoes was a thing he could repeat, he could think again _ ) and more of Pete than he thought possible.

Joe and Andy were having a log-sawing contest with their snores but Pete was not sleeping. Sure, he was pretending to sleep, but only to sprawl out on top of Patrick without consequences. Patrick sensed his awake-ness within a few moments of Pete coming to. Fact was, ever since the movie started looping and the four of them had been in various stages of being passed-out, Pete had been slipping in and out of a doze, twitching awake every few minutes or so. 

If it were Joe, Patrick would have wrapped his arms around him and just held him there until he settled, but he couldn't do that with Pete--something warned him against it and he listened to that instinct. Instead, he settled his hand lightly over Pete's. "What's eating you?"

"Mmmf."

"That's not an answer. And don't pretend like you're asleep because I know you're not."

Pete's eyes shone dark in the reflected light of Nightmare Before Christmas. He waited a long moment before answering and Patrick sensed that it wasn't an easy answer.

"How come you never said you were an alpha?"

Patrick's stomach curdled. He waited just as long to reply, and when he did, it was through dry lips and with a sour mouth. "I didn't know it mattered." He turned his face away from the part of him covered by a whiskey and beer-soaked Pete. "It's not--it's not who I am, or anything."

He thought Pete had fallen asleep, so his voice surprised him. "How could it not be?" Pete's voice was small. Uncertain.

Patrick licked his dry lips and winced at the rank taste. "Look, 'alpha' is mostly something that happens to my dick once in awhile. It doesn’t make me any more special than if I had a--a nipple ring or something."

" _ I _ have a nipple ring."

"You do?" Patrick tilted his head to bring Pete into focus. His face, outlined in the light from the TV, showed his teeth bared in a grin. "You-- _ fuck _ , Pete, that's not  _ safe! _ The way you stage-dive without your shirt--"

Pete laughed. Patrick felt it, low and dirty and dangerous somewhere in his gut where he shouldn't. " _ You _ . Worried about  _ my  _ safety."

"Is that so hard to believe?"

Pete went quiet again. "When people talk about 'safety' it comes off a lot like 'think of the children' and every time that comes up, 'the children' is the last thing anybody really gives a shit about. It's a convenient excuse to put…collars around people's necks and leashes in somebody else's hands."

Patrick thought of the feral and the sad little nest that he'd hopefully made better. "I don't want to hold anybody's leash. And I've never even  _ been  _ with--my girlfriends have all been betas."

"All three of them?" Pete's voice lilted into a tease.

"Ha. Ha. Two, actually."

"You've never mated an omega?"

Patrick frowned. "I'm not a zoo animal, Pete. Jesus. I'm nineteen, short, and ginger." He ducked his head and looked away. "And I--I don't have a growl. I'm not a normal alpha."

On his other side, Joe shifted in mid-snore. "Yeshy'are," he muttered, slurring the words together.

Patrick shoved him until he rolled back over into Andy and off Patrick's right hip. "I can't growl another alpha into a challenge and I honestly have no desire to do so. I can't growl an omega into submission and that sounds even worse than picking fights with other alphas. Like I said--alpha is a thing that happens to my dick and makes for really messy jerk-off sessions and that's about it."

"I can hear it in your voice, you know," Pete said after another long while, as the TV showed Sally being locked away by her mad-scientist creator. "Smell it on you."

Patrick snorted. "Yeah, and if I eat Thai food, you'll be smelling  _ that  _ coming off me."

"Dude, gross." But Pete laughed and poked him in the side. "It's more than that." He rolled away and flung an arm over his eyes and sighed. "It's gonna come out sooner or later, I guess. Might as well be now."

"Pete, no. I'm not that kind of alpha, and I never want to be. How long have we known each other now? Have I ever pulled alpha bullshit on you?"

"Mmm…you're an asshole about that hook for the new song."

Patrick drove a knuckle into Pete's ribs. "You know I'm right about that."

"You took my words and put them to music." Pete's voice was growing sleepier.

That made Patrick tense up. "I didn't mean--"

"No--s'good. You put your mark on 'em. Fixed 'em right." He sighed. "'S'just…I wish…I didn't need…"

Pete was drifting off.   _ About time _ , Patrick thought, and stroked his bandmate's shoulder. "It's okay to collaborate," he murmured, fighting his own sudden sleepiness. "We're better together, y'know. Even if I am an alpha. Alphas aren't s'posed t'be the--the boss of everything."

"Mmm, but you are."

"Only about the music."

"Patrick?"

“Hmm?"

“It'd be okay if you  _ were  _ the boss of me. Sometimes. When it's you, it's okay."

Pete was drunk and mostly asleep and then said something about tasting peanut butter when there was no peanut butter in the entire house, but Patrick held his first words close. They were the kindest thing anyone had ever said about his orientation.


	10. Notoriety

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An alpha-rella gets his invitation to the ball, but have the wild things already invaded the castle?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chains of responsibility leash a wild thing, but those same chains guide it up the mountain. The band's biggest gig comes with a big opportunity that may or may not be the best thing to ever happen to them. They're becoming knowns, and that means attention, whether they want it or not.

* * *

 

Patrick spent most of January trying to figure out Pete. They spent hours on the phone, practically days in each other's company, and nothing told him anything about Pete's orientation. Not that he cared, exactly, but he still felt a little defensive about Pete knowing he was an alpha. At times, he thought the older man was waiting for him to pounce on him or something. 

It made Patrick twitchy, which in turn must have sent out more "pounce" vibes that Pete picked at, in the form of something he'd taken to doing during shows where he'd suddenly appear next to Patrick--way too close inside his space-bubble--and do something designed to twist Patrick's instincts up into curdled knots low in his gut. 

Really, who thinks licking their singer is part of good stage showmanship?

Apparently the answer to that was, "a lot of cute girls and more than a few cute guys" because Pete was developing a Following. Some of them even spilled over to Patrick in a casual, tell-me-more-about-your-friend way. Pretty betas and ethereal omegas and even one or two direct alphas that made Patrick's eyes narrow. He was stereotyping but his nose told him he was right and it wasn't like fashion wasn't coded to orientation anyway. And they all wanted to know Pete's orientation.

Which Patrick didn't even know. Not even with his face stuck regularly into Pete's armpit for one reason or another. Pete was a goddamn scent-ninja.

It was kind of awesome.

Marie told him it made sense. The history she was studying from the early seventies said that the changewave riots were as much about people fighting over orientation influencing who could get fired from their job or live in a nice part of town as they were about sexual liberation or the sudden presence of much more olfactory information hitting human brains than ever before. 

"Everyone hits puberty in this big wet splat of hormones, but then, like, a few months or years later, your body settles down. There's a theory that the changewave is the same deal--after everything busted wide open, whatever triggered that latent part of us also gave us the chance to adapt."

"I wish it'd give me the tools to figure out Pete. Or at least, peel him off me when I have a solo."

Marie laughed. "It's gonna take more than biology to peel him away from you. He's crazy about you. You don't hear him talk about you when you're not around. He thinks you hung his canopy."

Patrick tried not to react to what Marie said. It was just an expression, after all. Hanging someone's canopy was like "tying the knot" used to be, before "knot" came with too many connotations that made alphas wince and cross their legs. 

But Patrick  _ was  _ guilty of literally hanging someone's canopy--the feral omega in the building next door to the Cellar. Patrick visited regularly, sometimes just to take a leak outside against the dumpster, even though he hated the fact that he even  _ had  _ to do such things.

Still, he doubted Pete could be an omega--there was no way--

_ Everybody's shocked when they find out you're an alpha _ …

Patrick frequently became lost in thought over that conversation.  He was absently tuning his acoustic in Joe's attic when Joe came bounding up the stairs, bringing in slush from the February streets outside. "We got one!" 

"One what?" Andy said from under the kit where he was attempting to use duct tape on his foot pedal.

"A gig! A venue!" 

"We've had a couple of those," Andy remarked. "Patrick, do you think I could borrow your foot pedal? I don't think this hack is gonna work out."

Patrick waved a hand at Andy, still distracted. "Have at it."

"This is different." Joe waved the flyer in Patrick's face. "It's at a  _ nice  _ place."

"The bingo hall was a nice place," Patrick said. "I mean, the antlers were creepy but--"

"This ain't no bingo hall," Joe practically crowed. "It's the Skyway Lounge!"

"The what?" Patrick wrinkled his nose. "Sounds lame."

"Fuck, did you say the Skyway Lounge?" Andy popped up from behind his drum kit like a prairie dog. "They invited  _ us? _ Is it a prank?"

Joe flapped his hands. "Well, not just us--Keith and I were at the Cellar sitting in on a set with Patterson because their guitarist had to work a third-shift and needed to bug out and--"

"The point, Joe?" Andy's voice was calmer than his earlier squeak, and held a soothing rumble of  _ alpha says settle down and use your words _ . Which Patrick appreciated but still sort of resented because Joe should be allowed to tell the story in his own time and his own way, but they  _ booked a venue _ and that was kinda getting lost in the translation.

Joe took a deep breath. "That lady we keep seeing at the Cellar was back again that night, talking to the manager. She wanted to book Patterson and a few other Cellar regulars for a special gig the Friday before Valentine's Day. Anyway, the guys from Patterson suggested us because, well, Patrick."

"Wait,  _ what? _ " Patrick's head came up and his attention was now fully on Joe. "I didn't do it."

Joe grinned. "No, Keith actually did. He had a little clip of our show at the VFW and showed it to her. Your voice, our sound, Pete's lyrics--she wanted us. A little edge, a little fun."

"She wanted Pete," Patrick said. Pete wasn't around to defend himself, but the VFW show stuck out in his mind for a number of reasons and Pete's behavior was one of them. Leaning up against Patrick, scenting him. Fucking  _ grinding  _ on him--it was all Patrick could do to keep from turning on Pete and snarling-- _ okay, squeaking _ \--a challenge that came straight out of something you'd find from an 80's A-Channel action drama. All that'd be missing were the mullets and moustaches.

And then, Pete had the gall to mutter in his ear. "I know a  _ seekrit  _ about you, Tricky," before spinning away to the other side of the stage. Patrick could  _ hear  _ the internet-lingo misspelling in the teasing tone.

That night, Pete took off right after the set and left the rest of them to pack up the equipment. Patrick swore he was going to throttle the little shit but Andy said it was okay and that Pete had told him earlier that he was going to have to jet. The following week when he returned from wherever he disappeared to, Pete bought everybody pizza every practice night and called Patrick four nights in a row and brought him coffee in the morning at work for the last two.

Still, Pete's antics and the memory of their first gig made Patrick insist on them all deciding on a song that would be a "nuclear option." Something they could play that would guarantee to work up the crowd so that Pete didn't have to dry-hump Patrick's leg for attention.

Pete was exactly the kind of stage presence booking agents liked. The charming smiles, the crowd engagement, the whole kohl-eyed sultry seductive charismatic package--it got butts in seats and sold tickets. Anybody who saw him perform, whether it was spinning with their band or screaming lyrics in Arma. But Patrick wanted to back that up with good, solid music and he knew they were capable of it.

Joe shook his head. "She liked your voice, even on that shitty recording, but whatever, dude. The point is we got a gig. That pays. Money, not pizza."

"Oh." Patrick blinked. "Well that changes everything." No, it wasn't the first time they'd gotten paid actual money, but the times were few enough still that it was kind of a big deal. "How much?"

"Eight hundred, plus a cut of the door."

Patrick blinked. Andy gasped. "That's…"

"A lot of fuckin' money, dude." Joe's face was shining. "It'll be the first place where I can do my spins and not stick to the floor."

"We have to tell Pete," Patrick said. "I gotta go find him--"  _ Because he still hasn't told me what he thinks is my "seekrit." _

"When you do, tell him we're playing the Heart Your Mate Speed-Date Night on the twelfth."

Andy groaned. "A speed-dating meat market?  _ That's _ the gig? Dude, I dunno if that's worth eight hundred."

"Yeah." Patrick suddenly had zero desire to find Pete. "Are you  _ sure  _ they want us and this isn’t just Marcus punking us or something?"

**

No one was punking them. The local radio stations that sponsored the event included the lady in the white suit that had been at the Cellar the afternoon they got their first gig. It turned out she  _ was  _ somebody to watch out for--a rep from a label Patrick had never heard of called Instinctual Beats Music. As far as he could find, they put out meditation music for yoga studios and self-hypnosis tapes to make you quit smoking.

Patrick, Joe, Andy, and a fidgety Pete were all shifting from foot to foot outside one of the conference rooms in the hotel where the Skyway Lounge was located. Inside the room, there were a bunch of radio DJs, sales people, and one harried-looking event planner from the hotel who kept shaking her head and mumbling things about pushing capacity and fire hazards.

The lady from the label stepped out of the room to meet with them. Her name was Denise and she explained the label was moving into a new area with some financial backing from the media industry. "We want first crack at young unsigned bands like yourselves. We're prepared to offer you representation."

Patrick's stomach did a full flop. He wanted to grab onto Joe--who was already grabbing onto the back of Patrick's jacket--and jump up and down and maybe scream a little. Signed to a label? Their silly little band that didn't even have a real name yet?

"What motivates this?" Thank God Andy was still sane enough to ask relevant questions.

"We'll never be able to compete with the big music labels, but our media backer wants bands from all over the musical map."

Pete hung back, skeptical. "If you don't know the scene, how are you any good to us?"

Denise cocked her head and a little frown line appeared between her eyebrows. "You're the one that jumps off things, right?"

Beside Patrick, Joe stifled a snort. Pete bristled. "I'm the principal lyricist."

"We're asking our artists to think beyond the local live music scene to multi-media--movies, television, video games, internet content--all that needs music."

"Understand that we can't verbally commit without anything in front of us," Pete said, surprising the hell out of Patrick with his grown-up, formal tone.

Denise gave Pete a second, more appraising, look. "Understood. We have written letters of intent that provide executive summaries of the key points of the contract for both parties, if you'll provide me with email addresses."

"We'll have our people look them over," Andy said when they were finished scratching out email handles like  _ ricktalyfe _ ,  _ ahurleyxvxvx _ ,  _ peterpanda _ , and  _ 69urmom  _ (Goddammit, Joe).

When Denise's back was turned, Patrick leaned over to Andy. "Dude, do we even  _ have  _ people?"

But in the end, Denise shook their hands and they not only had a gig, but an offer on the table.

The next day, Andy called him. "Did you check your email?"

Patrick opened his laptop. "Checking it now." He scanned through the stupid shit and found something from--oh. "Instinctual Beats Media would like to extend the offer of representation--" His mouth went dry. "Andy is this a contract? For a label?"

"Yeah. It is."

Patrick pushed the laptop away. "I can't--I don't--I'm gonna hurl--"

"Breathe."

"Do we say yes?"

The other end of the phone thumped, but then he heard Pete's voice. "No! Never say yes until you see the actual contract."

_ But we get to play _ , one plaintive part of him whined.

“Contracts are binding things. Anything that binds you to someone else is full of booby traps,” Pete said.

Behind him, in the background, Joe shouted, “Boobies!” and Patrick heard muffled snorts and  _ you’re such a dick will you shut up already I’m trying to be serious _ .

“So can Marcus look it over?”

“We need a lawyer, dude,” Pete said. “My dad’s a lawyer. He can explain it to us if you’re okay with that.”

“It’s a good place to start. I don’t want to get caught in any booby traps.”

“We don’t even know what this gig is like. If the gig sucks, then having a contract would be a hundred times worse. Never trust anything that binds you to someone else at face value,” Pete said. There was a lot of weight in his tone and Patrick tried not to think about what must have caused that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Goddammit, Joe. Also, I must never meet Marie Trohman. I would need to offer profuse apologies, for which she'd have no idea. I just happen to think she's a badass.
> 
> Also, sorry for the chapter titles and summaries. They only make sense if you look at this whole thing as a fairytale allegory, which I didn't even intend in the first place, but that's what happens when stories sneak away from you like that...


	11. Ballroom Blitz

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cinder-alpha goes to the ball and finds all the faces are just masks worn by the wild things, and truths have a way of slipping out when you've been staring them in the face all along.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a man in the back as a matter of fact with eyes all red like the sun.

* * *

 

The Friday before Valentine's Day, the band that finally decided to call themselves Fall Out Boy (because Marie could fit it on a t-shirt stencil and had her friends at the university make a bunch the week prior). They also had lunch that afternoon in the conference room of Pete's dad's law firm. 

Pete's mom brought sandwiches while his dad outlined the points of the contract. Joe summarized to make sure they were getting it right. "So this part basically says that we perform tonight for a flat fee plus ten percent of the door." He shuffled the papers. "This part says we can submit a demo tape, or we have to submit a demo tape?”

Pete Senior peered more closely at the contract. “It says you have to, but the language reads like it’s already done. Did anyone send them a tape? Pete?”

Pete shook his head. “Joe? Andy? Patrick?”

Joe raised his hand. “I mean, Keith sent her that video of our performance.”

“That could count,” Pete’s dad said carefully, “But as long as there’s a question, that’s a dispute.”

“And this part says they want to offer us a recording contract but they have to take no for an answer?"

Pete's dad nodded. "Yes. If you refuse the contract, they have to accept your refusal in writing before you can sign with another label.”

"Well that's bullshit."

Pete's dad nodded again. "That's the music industry. Good luck tonight, boys."

"Be careful, Petey," Pete's mom said. He squirmed out of her hug, his face red. Joe and Patrick teased him the entire train ride across town. They packed the van, gave Pete a hard time for going extra hard on his guyliner, and headed to the Skyway Lounge full of nervous energy and Mountain Dew.

 

At the hotel, the HVAC system kept making strange noises and the maintenance corridor behind the nightclub had a weird smell to it and clear signs of renovation in progress. But they had a uniformed bellhop from the hotel side of the building and a brass-railed cart with wheels to help carry all their stuff in from the back lot.

Beside him, Andy shifted closer to Joe. "This is…ugh."

Joe shrugged. "Ugh pays." They stood by the back doors to the ballroom, waiting for the bellhop to unlatch the doors and prop them open.

A girl with big hair and a flowing dress and an acoustic guitar case came up and introduced herself as the opening act. "I'm Paloma."

"Hey, you sang the other night at the Java place," Patrick said, instead of "hello" like normal people.

She grinned and leaned towards him. "Yeah, I--did you like?"

He nodded. They talked music for a few minutes and Paloma kept edging closer until Pete stepped up to them. "Hi, can I have my singer now?" and licked up the side of Patrick's face, leaving a wet trail of spit that tasted like cherry Ring Pop. 

Paloma's eyes flicked back and forth between them and a tiny frown appeared between her eyebrows. She offered her hand. "Nice to meet you, Patrick."

When he shook her hand, he felt her fingers at his wrist, rubbing lightly. He realized two things at once--one, that she was an omega, and two, that she was into him.

Pete locked his arm around Patrick's neck. "Come on, Pattycakes. I think I hear your mom calling."

Patrick flushed. "Calling you an asshole," he muttered, face burning. He waved to Paloma and let Pete drag him off.

"What's got your panties in a bunch, Wentz?" He head-butted Pete's shoulder until Pete let him go. Pete licked him again, this time on the other side of his face, but released him.

"Concordance," Pete said flatly. "This whole fuckin' thing stinks of Concordance." He glared around the empty lounge, the dark-stained wooden chairs and polished brass fixtures gleaming in the lights while the cold air swirled from the ceiling fans in anticipation of a crush of hot, sweaty people in a few hours.

Patrick followed his gaze. The front half of the room closest to the stage was a traditional "speed-dating" setup--two long rows of two-person tables. The back half held more intimate tables in a scatter pattern, and booths with curtains along the back wall, each one bearing an omega symbol. 

At the main entrance to the club, a lattice arch decorated with roses held a Beta symbol. But beside it, and dominating the entrance space, was pop-up canopy with shiny curtains enclosing it. One side was marked with the Alpha sign and the other with an Omega symbol and a sign between them that read, "Check Your Mate-Match!" The curtains at the front were tied back with velvet ropes and inside the connected space were a beanbag chair on either side, a gauzy curtain separating them. 

The traffic patterns were clear. Betas through the arch and into the speed dating setup, while alphas and omegas to the left, into the tents, and to the back. If you were an omega, you had to pass through the bower, then go wait in a booth while the alphas prowled around the back, until they picked you out and dragged you into the tent to see if you were "scent-mates." Patrick could feel Marie's scowl from here.

"Oh," he said, his tone as flat as Pete's ironed bangs. "I see."

He could hear it, too. The hum of a portable air-cleaner behind the tent to remove any stray scents from the air so they wouldn't confuse things with Concordance's little forced-intimacy gambit. Of course. Because of fucking scent-matching.

A headache started in the back of his neck.  _ Let it go, it's just a gig _ .

Denise joined them a few minutes later. "Which one of you is Patrick again?" Professional tone, professional dress, everything about her screamed Corporate right down to the folder in her hand. 

Patrick waved and felt like an awkward dork the moment he did it. Denise swept past him. "Come along. You'll set up over here. Thirty-minute set, I want fast and light, original stuff mixed in with covers." She opened the folders. "Here's a list of suggestions. If you can work in some of those covers, there's a bonus."

"What, like a money bonus?" Joe asked. Denise ignored him.

Patrick glanced at the sheet and saw a lot of pop and romantic songs. "We don't really do ballads, but yeah, I think I get the gist of what you want." He handed the sheet back to her.

"Excellent. Your opening act is Paloma. She's acoustic, mood-music. She'll put people at ease and you'll get them wound up. After you, there's a DJ to wind up the event as people pair off."

Patrick really didn't care but he let her go on anyway. Behind him, Pete called out. "Yo, where can we set up merch?"

Denise ignored him and Patrick narrowed his eyes at the subtle shift in her attentions. She'd heard Pete, all right. When Denise flicked her gaze to Patrick's, he raised his eyebrow. "My bandmate asked a question."

Her nostrils flared. "Oh, I didn't realize--"

Now it was Patrick's turn to scrunch up his nose. " _ Bandmate _ , not bondmate. Pete's not--"

She thought Pete was his--he couldn't help the ironic smile that twisted his lips. "You clearly don't understand the Chicago softcore scene." As if Pete Wentz would ever bond with anyone.

_ It'd be okay if you were the boss of me _ .

Marie came into the room with another two bellhops and boxes full of t-shirts that Patrick didn't even know existed. "Ms. Pullman, I'll be setting up in the back, near the bar."

"And you are?"

Marie flicked her hair. "Merchandise management for the band. We're allowed fifty square feet but we'll take up much less than that."

Denise blinked. "Very well."

_ Nice recovery _ , Patrick thought. "One of us will see you after the set to settle up," he said.

An hour later, the lounge was packed full of people and Patrick's head was on fire. The ambient temperature went up ten degrees at least, and the room was full of women in slinky dresses, men in open-collared shirts, and a smattering of their usual fans.  _ We're going to suck so bad _ , he thought.  _ These people don't know us _ . Several were already giving Pete the stink-eye with his eyeliner and ripped muscle shirt. Patrick gave them the stink-eye right back and shoved his beanie further down on his head to cover his already-sweaty hair.

Pete stepped up to the microphone and ordered the room to give Paloma another round of applause. "Now we want your asses out of those chairs because this is the part of your night where you shake off the bullshit and dance!"

Andy counted them in and they started to play.

Patrick was grateful for the in-ears he'd spent his Christmas money for. He doubted he could have kept up with the music without them when his head was ringing from the dry air and something like mildew sat on the back of his tongue.

Denise may have been as out of place as a cake in a butcher shop, but she knew how to read her crowd and sure enough, the cover songs they played had people out on the dance floor. For once, it was fun playing to a beta crowd. The speed-daters wore their light-up nametags and shuffled and bopped and shimmied around with each other.

But hey--the band got to play the original songs they'd been working on and people danced or nodded along, so that was a thing, especially the last one, which was all Patrick's. His lyrics were only half-done--Pete would do something so much better, but Patrick had wanted this one as a fuck-you to the smarmy Valentine's Day scent-mate frenzy, and it was the second to last song anyway. People on the dance floor were clapping along to the tune, even though he slurred the words but they were  _ listening _ . To  _ their  _ song. Not somebody else’s or a cover.

He met Joe’s eyes for a brief moment and the awe coming off his guitarist’s face had a twin in his own, he was sure of it.  _ This is it. This is who we are _ .

In the back of the room, people were pairing up and Patrick couldn't see clearly whether or not it was something to celebrate, but in the front on the dance floor, they were turned towards the stage.

Patrick had been working on a cover of "Love Will Tear Us Apart" by Joy Division and it was a good wrap-up to their set, and about as close to romantic as they got. The DJ would play all the sappy love songs later. Whatever. It wasn't like he didn't fucking ache for someone to hold, to nibble on, to press into until they gave underneath him and--

There was a commotion at the back of the room. A tall woman faced off against a tense man while a shorter woman held up hands between them. Patrick's mouth kept moving, shaping around the plaintive words.  _ Not my problem _ , he thought.

"Patrick?" Pete was at his side, crowding him out from the microphone. He reached up and plucked one of Patrick's in-ears out. "You're purring!"

Holy shit. He clamped his mouth shut and shifted into the acoustic part of the bridge, thank Christ, and looped it out while he stepped away from the microphone to glance at his bandmates.

The earlier euphoria was gone. Joe's eyes were wide, flicking from side to side and going to the back of the room. Andy stood behind his drum kit. Pete just stared out at the crowd, defiance in his gaze. In the back of the room, Marie was gesturing frantically. Andy made to move to her, but glanced back at Joe instead.

Patrick still had the second half of the song to get through. "Do you cry out in your sleep? All my feelings exposed--" Oh God, he was still doing it! He stomped his foot against the floor of the stage to try to knock his body out of whatever the fuck this was. At the back of the room, the altercation attracted spectators. Patrick didn't mean to, but he sang louder and his purrbox would not. Fucking. Stop.

 

There comes a time when sometimes, instead of fighting the vibe, suppressing the instinct, or standing against the wave, that the only thing you can do is climb an amp and ride it.

Patrick let the last notes of the Joy Division cover fade away and turned around to Andy. "One more," he said, loud enough for them to hear the dead seriousness in his voice. This crowd was about to turn if enough people in the front noticed the bullshit in the back. "Nuclear option!"

Joe and Andy both nodded. Pete looked a little confused. And a little dazed, if Patrick was being honest. As dazed as Patrick felt. Joe stepped to Pete and spoke into Pete's ear. After a moment, Pete nodded and gave Patrick a thumbs up with a show of teeth and Andy started the drumbeat.

"One more, just for the fun ones in the back, huh?" Pete said into the microphone. "Are you ready, Joe?"

"Uh-huh." The "ones in the back" had become twos and threes.

"Andy?"

"Yeah." Patrick could spot Denise's white suit weaving through the gathering cluster of people watching the tall woman face off against her aggressive challenger. 

"Patrick?"

Patrick leaned into his mic. "Okay." The omega between them made ever more frantic hand signals.

"Alright fellas, let's go!"

Patrick jumped in with the vocals. They'd never practiced it all the way through, but he trusted Pete.  _ That means something _ , a tiny part of him said. 

"Oh, it's been getting so hard living with the things you do to me." In the back, Marie had come out from behind the merch table and--oh Joe and Andy were not going to be happy with that--elbowed her way through the back towards the knot of people. And knot was right. Body language, even to Patrick's bad eyes, said the instigators were both knot-heads. What the hell were they thinking?

Beside him, Pete started strutting and the people on the dance floor started to cheer once they recognized the song. Patrick wouldn't be able to hit the falsetto notes with his purrbox going the way it was, but he trusted Pete to do it in screamo.

Patrick stepped back and motioned to Pete. Pete's grin widened and he grabbed the mic. "There's a man in the back as a matter of fact with eyes all red like the sun! And a girl in the corner let no one ignore her 'cause she thinks she's the passionate one!"

Their own girl from the corner had shoved through to the posturing alphas and grabbed the omega girl's hand. With a yank, Marie pulled the girl away from the knot-heads and behind the merch table.

Patrick leaned into Pete as they both sang the lead-in to the chorus, catching Pete's eye before Pete spun away to work the crowd gathering in front of the stage. Before Pete spun away, he butted his face against Patrick's neck just as Patrick sucked in a deep breath--

And two things fell into place.

First, everything from the night--his headache, Pete's agitation, that weird swampy smell, his purr--ticked off warning bells that he was about to go into a very off-schedule and not-at-all natural alpha rut.

Just like every other alpha in the room.

Second, Patrick--and all the other alphas--were going into that rut--in the presence of at least one unclaimed omega who never signed up for it and who was awfully close to heat himself. 

Patrick closed his eyes and went back to a dark basement with a wounded, feral omega asking him for a knot he didn't really want and hated himself for needing. A bassist who bailed on all his bands at inconvenient times and had half a dozen bullshit stories for every excuse. A wary, defiant poet who wore his heart on lined notebook paper and kept his instincts so tightly bound that they hid in plain sight.

The perfect scent. For an alpha who wouldn't trust a scent that had been right in front of him all along.

And was currently climbing a stack of amps ready to jump right into the crowd.

Patrick moved faster than he'd ever moved on or off stage before. It took him one and a half "yeah's" to make it all the way over to the corner and to tangle a hand in the back of Pete's shirt before he could go higher. "Yeah, yeah,  _ NO _ , yeah!" He gave Pete a little shake and pulled him against his side.

"The man in the back said everyone attack and it turned into a ballroom blitz!"

And holy fuck did it ever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor, oblivious Patrick finally gets it. Just goes to show that an assumption makes an ass out of u and an umption. Also, I'm really meh at moodboards. You can mock me at glitterandrocketfuel.tumblr.com
> 
> Just in case anyone reading is younger than dirt, yes, I made the boys play "Ballroom Blitz" because it just seemed like the perfect opportunity. Pete would kill it doing screamo and Patrick's got the falsetto range to handle it. 
> 
> And if you get the chance, look up the "Stripped" Fall Out Boy cover of "Love will tear us apart" because bb!Patrick groaning out Joy Division lyrics is a thing. You're welcome.


	12. Not For Sale

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Don't sing me your songs of love. Howl at the moon because that is what throats are made for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> People tend to underestimate a twinky little alpha who can't even muster a growl.
> 
> People are wrong.

So maybe it wasn't the most sensible choice to play to a crowd that was already primed to turn into a brawl. Maybe it wasn't the most sensible choice to pat the DJ on the back and wish him luck before bolting down the swampy-smelling back corridor towards the parking lot. But that is exactly what Patrick and Andy did to Pete and Joe. 

Marie came skidding through the door with a trolley of merch in tow. "Get those two to the van, now!"

"Already on it," Andy said. 

Pete wriggled out of Andy's grip and launched himself at Patrick. "I can explain--"

Patrick closed his eyes and went back to a dark basement. "Not now, you can't. My nuts are in a noose and I'm not thinking real clear and neither will a lot of those jackasses in there. Get to where you're safe."

Patrick could hear the DJ start playing something bubble-gum pop and he really doubted it would help the scene. He waved Andy away when he tried to help with instrument cases. "Go on with Pete and Joe."

Thank God for Marie and her towering rage. Towering rage got the amps stacked, the lines coiled, and Andy's kit broken down in record time while the back of the room descended into chaos. The cops showed up just as they were loading the last of the gear into the back. Marie hopped in the back and Patrick climbed into the front and they peeled out of the parking lot like their tires were on fire.

"That," Patrick said, "was  _ not  _ awesome."

"No, it really wasn't this time, was it?" Joe sounded sad. "We didn't even get paid."

"Yet," Patrick and Marie both said in unison. 

Beside Joe, Pete huddled in one of the blankets they normally used to wrap Andy's cymbals in so they didn't clank together every time the van hit a bump. Once they were on the highway heading back to their part of town, Patrick slid back on the seat next to Pete. "Hey."

Pete peered at him from the depths of the hoodie, eyes huge and dark and daring Patrick to call him out, which Patrick refused to do.

"It doesn't matter," he murmured.

Pete, inexplicably, glared up at him. "Why would you say that?"

He was about to explain when he was dragged away from Pete and pinned down. By Marie. Who brandished a medical stick. "Joe says that Andy says that you shouldn't be like this right now." She poked him in the arm and he felt the tiny lancet pierce his skin just enough for a blood drop.

"Ow." What the fuck just happened?

"Yep." Marie flicked on the overhead dome light to reveal the stick's results. The A appeared bright red in the little window. "Your purrbox gave you away. You never purr when you sing, but you never sing when you have ruts, do you?"

Patrick shook his head. But from his hoodie-huddle, Pete spoke up. "He did once."

Hot shame flared through Patrick as he remembered his last rut. Talking to an oblivious Pete. Well, a Pete he  _ thought  _ was oblivious. "Just drop me off at home. I don't--I can't be around--"

"Say no more," Andy said from the driver's seat.

Patrick spent the night in feverish rut-dreams, the sleeve doing less help than usual. The unnatural onset of his rut exhausted him at the same time it stole any sort of actual rest from him. With clumsy thumbs, he sent texts to Pete in the ether, hoping the other would listen. 

_ It doesn't matter.  _

_ It was never my business anyway.  _

_ Your orientation means nothing to me.  _

_ I would never do anything to make you feel bad. _

_ Please talk to me _ .

**

Thankfully, the brief rut was over in less than a day. Patrick called Andy and told the other alpha that he was going to get their money.

"Patrick, did you check your email?"

Patrick sighed. "I didn't have any free hands what with an artificial rut locking my nutsack into a vise for sixteen hours."

Andy groaned in sympathy. "That's what happened to me. Thank God for Joe and Marie."

"Yeah, well…" Patrick trailed off. "Um, how's Pete?"

"You should talk to him," Andy replied. "Soon. Denise sent out an apology to everyone for the way things got out of hand. She wants to meet with you."

“Me? What for?"

Andy thought for a minute. "Probably because out of all of us, you look like you're the one easiest to manipulate."

"Aww, come on!"

"Pete's weird and scares people with his eyeliner. Everyone already knows I'm nobody to mess with, and Joe's my omega so anyone who goes after Joe gets an earful of me. You look like you're barely out of the cradle--"

"Goddammit, Andy!"

"Listen, you know as well as I do that you use that to your advantage. Use it now. Get our money."

Patrick asked the question he was afraid to ask. "What about the contract?" He found the email on his laptop from Denise. At the end of her apology, she said the offer was still open. The label would be happy to learn and profit-share and it sounded unnaturally good. Unnatural being the operative word.

"What do you think?"

 

Denise was warmly apologetic when Patrick met her in the hotel lobby. She had another white suit on and another folder in her hand. "Thank you for seeing me."

"Thank you for paying us," Patrick said, by way of dropping a huge hint.

"Er, yes." She fumbled with her folder. "So for your demo, I couldn't quite make out the lyrics of that song you sang in the performance video. Our team offered to set up a studio demo for you so you can re-record the song." She handed Patrick a lyric sheet from the folder. “And they offered some suggestions for the lyrics.

Patrick had been about to thank her for the offer, then explain the lyrics weren't yet nailed down (because really, he'd just been kind of white-boy freestyle rapping, hoping that the omegas at the event could hear an alpha that wasn't being a jackass about it) when Denise pointed to the words. 

"We've sent it through our studio to give it some polish," she said. "Something in alignment with the sound we want all our artists to promote."

Patrick stared at her. "You  _ rewrote  _ our lyrics?" He looked down.

“Cleaned them up,” she corrected.

He wasn’t buying. Those words...they didn’t really even sound like any of them.

 

When I breathe you in

I feel you under my skin

And my heart beats 

In time with your heat

You're delectable baby, my favorite sin.

 

I'll keep you mine

I'll cross that line

You'll never want for anything

You'll be my sunshine.

 

You're my scent-mate baby,

Come down from heaven blessed.

Open your heart to me

I'll make my heart's home in your nest.

 

"We made them…more in line with the values we're promoting," Denise said smoothly. "Your band--your sound, your look, your voice--they appeal to the young people who aren't…responsive to the messaging of the Omega Network, and are too young to understand the values of the A Channel. We need to reach them--"

" _ Reach _ them?" Patrick's entire body went rigid and hot and the lowest sound he'd ever made--the closest to an alpha growl that ever rubbed across his vocal cords snarled out. "You rewrote our song so you could  _ sell scent-mating? _ "

He shuffled the pages until he came to the contract, which was considerably longer and more fraught with legalese than the letter they'd been given at the beginning of the week.

Denise blinked, stunned. "Mr. Stump--Patrick--that is what signing to a label means. Instinctual Beats Music supports artists making a difference through creative expression under the umbrella of the larger Concordance social initiative--"

Patrick's lip curled. "You said you wanted our sound, not just a mouthpiece for your own." The paragraphs wanted to swim into nonsense before his eyes, but he found the words that confirmed the sinking feeling in his gut. God, Joe's going to be crushed. Clauses like termination for behavior, rights of final approval on finished works, production requirements limiting them to using in-house producers and engineers--all warning flags that Patrick knew were Bad Ideas. 

"This is business, not your little garage-band nonsense. Concordance is involved in all sorts of media." She leaned in. "We're your only shot, kid. No one else is going into these crappy dives and listening to you.”

"Oh, you're so wrong." He couldn't keep a little laugh from coming out, even as slow anger began to boil up from his gut. 

Suddenly he understood why his dad had never signed with a major label. This woman didn't know music. She didn't even know the people who liked the music, wanted to buy the music. She only knew what she wanted them to buy, what she wanted them to think. She only knew what she thought was true.

_ Andy's right. I  _ do  _ enjoy it when people underestimate me _ , he thought. "You'll pay us for the gig and we're gone."

Denise stared at him. "Look, this experiment with live performances is a pilot program--I'm sure Concordance is willing to hear your feedback--"

Patrick tossed the page back at her. "Here's my feedback. No artist will ever agree to bullshit like this. You think you have people figured out, but it's just--it's just a few chemicals you mix up together and stick in the air vents!"

Denise blanched. Patrick pressed the issue, his entire body hot with rage now. "Yeah, I caught on to your little liquid love potion thing before. It's why two of my band members had to hide out in the van and hold the other one back from trashing this whole shitty set-up." 

Patrick leaned into her face, not even caring that she was a "proper" alpha and a head taller than him with her heels on. "You think the betas who came here last night are going to like finding out that this speed-dating set-up was just an excuse for you to test out your bullshit crowd-control scents on independent omegas? Or that the alphas will be happy to find out that all these "scent-matches" you're trying to sell are just-just  _ nose-roofies? _ "

"They match--"

"They  _ mask _ , Denise." He cut her off. "They're a shortcut so people don't have to do the work of getting to know each other. They're a hack to bypass consent. While you were busy drugging the air, did you not notice how many people outside of those stupid fumigation tents were actually having a good time talking to each other?"

Denise's features looked more pinched. "But that's just consolation--"

Patrick almost laughed at her crestfallen expression. He would have felt sorry for her if she wasn't working for a company that wanted to roofie the entire world. "It's really not. It's what people do in relationships, not this fairytale bullshit magic you're selling based on people's pit-stink."

"What am I supposed to tell my bosses? You owe us a song. The deal was for a live gig and a demo of original content."

Patrick wished he could have Andy, Joe, and Pete here with him. He didn't want to make this kind of decision for the rest of them, but he couldn't see a universe where any of them would actually want this contract. 

_ I don't know why I'm doing this _ . "Look--instead of this--whatever you did with our lyrics, let me give you something completely different." He hummed a short melody and tapped out a beat on his thighs. It was peppy, catchy, the kind of hook that would perk up the ears of radio DJs. "I got them can't-dance blues and I'm alone outside the club waiting for somebody to play to the beat of my heart." It was a snappy few lyrics and ones he was already revising as he looked back at Denise. "Give it to that omega girl who was playing at the beginning of the night. She's got a voice for it, you get a band to back her up, add in horns in the studio, and it'll be the earworm everybody's singing in six months' time."

Denise sighed.

Patrick arched an eyebrow. "Or I could let the club manager know that the Concordance rep was in here peddling illegal artificial scent and tampering with his HVAC system's air cleaners."

She pressed her lips together. "Anything else?"

He stood up. She followed suit. "Yeah. All four of us get writing credits."

Denise nodded, shoulders slumping. "Concordance isn't going to let up on making alpha-omega pairings by scent. There are standards society should be following that would make everybody much more--"

"Miserable," Patrick cut her off. "There's an entire community of omegas who don't want to be claimed or bonded and forcing them into relationships with alphas is just going to make everybody more miserable." He leveled a look at her. "My parents were 'scent-mates.' When the pheromones wore off, they couldn't make it work and my home life sucked because of it. You wanna push a whole 'nother generation of kids into broken homes, I can't stop you by myself. But I promise you that for every alpha-growl bullshit idea you put out there, I will sing sweet purring melodies that remind people of another way."

Patrick hadn't realized what he was doing, but he'd backed Denise into the wall next to the door. She bristled…and then turned her head and lowered her gaze. "I guess--I guess we'll see who's ideas win out, then."

Patrick blinked. He'd never actually been in a real, honest-to-God alpha challenge with another adult, but that's exactly what just happened. 

And he won. 

No, he didn't feel great about intimidating this woman into submission, yet she almost looked relieved as he  stepped back and made an "after you" gesture. He even bowed like a dandy as she passed him. 

As she passed, she pressed a slip of paper into his hand. "Cash that quick," she muttered. "Concordance won't be happy to lose you, but I'll sell them on the success of the speed-dating event outside of the brawl." She paused at the back door leading out. "You know, you'd make a lousy Concordance alpha."

"That's the biggest compliment anyone's ever paid me," he retorted.

Her lips softened at the corners. "But any omega would be lucky to have you as their champion." The blast of cold air that hit him as she left brought with it fresh air and the scent of parking lot, relief, and freedom. He stared down at the check, and the number of zeroes on the left side of the decimal point. 

"Holy smokes!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almost there. This turned way more defiant than "oh, let me write mah fren' some ABO smuts with feels."
> 
> It even has original song lyrics. They're kinda lowkey cheesy, but who doesn't love cheese?


	13. Shelter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's time to come home, little wild thing. Sing your howl, find your growl, come into the woods. We've been waiting for you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's time to do what Patrick has been trying to do all along.

* * *

 

Grand gestures were definitely Pete's thing. And Pete's grand gesture was being unavailable right now. Patrick kept texting, until finally Pete replied.  _ It does matter. It matters to me. I am who I am and you can't ignore it, Trick _ .

So Patrick needed a lot of help in pulling this one off if he was going to prove to Pete that he wasn’t ignoring Pete’s omega-ness. 

He needed Andy to help break him into Pete's pit of an apartment, he needed Joe for technical assistance and expert advice, and he needed Marie to track Pete long enough so that he and Andy and Joe could get the rest taken care of. And he needed that Concordance money.

When he proposed the idea, Andy loved it immediately. "It's fitting that Concordance money will go to something exactly the opposite of what they're promoting."

Joe agreed. "I still have my employee discount at Beds and Bowers."

"I'll help." Marie threaded her fingers through Joe's. "I had no idea Pete didn't have safe shelter."

"I had no idea he even needed it," Joe confessed and Patrick nodded along. How could he have missed all the signs that Pete and the feral were one and the same?

Marie became briefly insufferable. "I told you guys labels are bullshit."

Valentine's Day proper ended up being on a weekday. Marie spent the entire afternoon sending texts to Joe every time Pete seemed to head towards the alley, while Patrick, Joe, and Andy carted the box Patrick had stored at Pete's to the basement along with all the stuff they bought at Joe's work. 

When Andy spied the sad little nest, he pressed his lips together and shook his head. "All this time--I should have known--"

"How could you have?" Patrick asked.

"I knew what he was--an omega--but I just thought--he always made it seem like he spent his heats at his parents' place." Andy sniffed the air. "You figured it out."

Patrick shook his head. "I happened on him by chance. Didn't know who he was until the other night. And my nose is good."

"You shacked with an unknown omega?" Joe cautiously circled the nest area. "With a nest like this? Patrick, that's not safe!"

"I didn't shack with him!" Patrick was reluctant to disturb the nest--it might be small and sad, but it was something he and Pete built together. Even if it wasn't together-together. If Pete ever talked to him again.

Along with supplies Patrick had in his car, the trio set to work sweeping the basement. Andy put up the pop-up awning and Joe ran the line that would hold the curtains Marie had picked out--red and gold and blue--and hung them. Patrick came along behind Joe and ran wires behind the curtains, then used zip ties to secure small speakers that could be hooked into a stereo system or what Patrick had currently, which was a set of walkie-talkies.

Andy set to work stringing up the Christmas lights and only shocked himself once when he found out someone had rigged the ancient fuse box to bypass blown fuses with a copper penny, but Patrick found a packet of spares in ancient packaging and replaced them with fresh ones.

When everything was set--swept clean, aired out, and fluffed up, the three of them cleared out thanks to a warning text from Marie. Patrick, Joe, and Andy met her at the diner across the block once she peeled off Pete's trail as he turned down the alley.

Patrick took his time eating while the four of them discussed Friday night's events. "I hope I didn't fuck us over everywhere. If word gets out that we turned down Concordance--"

"Word's already sneaking out," Marie said, looking at her phone. "I'm making sure of it."

Andy grinned. "We're gonna be punk heroes."

"Legends," Joe chimed in. "Unstoppable." 

He sounded like Pete now. "Unclaimed in the sense that our band is yet unsigned." 

"Which we will worry about on another day, when our legends get big enough," Andy said. "Speaking of unclaimed…don't you have somewhere to be?" He raised a brow to Patrick.

Patrick set some cash down on the table--more than enough to cover the entire bill, to thank his friends. He shoved his beanie down on his head. "Yep. Time to go make music to soothe a savage beast."

**

Patrick set the walkie-talkie up on the low wall leading to the stairwell and locked the button down to broadcast. Pete should have already made his way inside and seen his new nest. The stereo system was hooked into the frequency of the walkie-talkies and would play him over the speakers in the bower.

He strummed a few opening chords, slow, moody, and too delicate for the Cellar or the bingo hall or anywhere they'd yet played, and began to sing.

When I breathe you in

I feel you under my skin

And my heart leaps 

I don't care about your heat

Fuck the world that tells us our love should be a sin.

 

I don't have to call you mine

I'll never cross your line

You'll never lose a single thing

Just let me bask in your sunshine.

 

You're so much more than a scent-mate baby,

I don't need heaven, won't make foul of your nest.

Open up your heart to me, I'll give you mine

I'll build you safe haven, a home where your heart can rest.

 

Patrick finished the song and the last notes drifted into the silence. Nothing but dead air came from the other end of the walkie-talkie. He took a drink from the water bottle, feeling suddenly nervous. Wanting to lean against the dumpster for support in case Pete didn't like the song. "Pete? Are you okay in there?" He knew Pete wouldn't want to be disturbed, which was why his grand gesture was a long-distance one. 

Instead, he caught just enough of the heady scent of the omega, right before a body dropped down from the fire escape and crashed into his with a growl.

Pete reached for his acoustic, setting it down on the short ledge next to the stairwell, right before wrapping himself around Patrick like an octopus.

Patrick laughed, a little breathless. "Did you--did you like--"

"Like what?"

Patrick drew away. "Have you been inside?"

Pete's lip curled up. "Don't fuckin' care about inside.  _ You're _ not inside."

Patrick was starting to feel a little loopy with the pheromone cocktail enveloping him. Pete's hands were skimming over his coat, around his shoulders, under the hood at the back of his neck to catch the collar of his corduroy jacket to pull Patrick into the crook of his neck.

Once Patrick had his nose buried in the open collar of Pete's hoodie, how was he not supposed to breathe in that heavenly scent? "We should get inside," he murmured against Pete's skin. He dragged in another breath and wasn't at all surprised to hear the rumble of his purrbox starting up.

Pete leaned back. "I love it when you do that." His teeth flashed under the weak light of the street lamp. "Alpha."

Patrick cocked up an eyebrow. "I'm an alpha who can't growl and doesn't particularly want to."

"You think that song wasn't a fucking roar?"

"You liked it?"

"Liked it? Fuck, Patrick, you're gonna turn it into an  _ anthem _ ."

"Pete, it's a love song. An acoustic love song. About the hypocrisy of scent-mates."

Pete's smile faded and his eyes turned serious and dark. "That version is mine. The world can have the punk rock version." To drive his point home, he crowded into Patrick's space.

As soon as Pete made the suggestion, Patrick's brain acted on it. Yes, of course, speed it up, double up the verses, extend the bridge, drop an octave here, switch to a minor key--

But then Pete was nosing into the collar of his jacket. "Heat's coming on," Pete said against his skin, sending shivers through Patrick. Pete's fingers curled in the lapels and a light shove sent Patrick stumbling down the stairs, echoing that first night.

_ Only without the minor head injury _ , Patrick thought. He was still dizzy, though, as they stumbled against the door to the basement. "You sure, Pete?"

Pete grabbed his chin in rough fingers. "Did I not hear you croon for me? Snarl a challenge to the world, promising to stand between me and anything in it that wanted to violate my body or foul my nest?" Pete's golden gaze searched his. "Did I misinterpret?"

Patrick's heart bucked loose from its moorings and flopped around in his chest. He swallowed past the sudden lump in his throat and shook his head. "N-no. I-I never want to use your biology against you. As long as I'm even in your life, no one else will, either, because it's your choice, not theirs, and not mine, either."

Pete let out a little moan when Patrick finished speaking. Patrick didn't even realize how strong his feelings were--or that Pete had gotten so much more meaning out of the song--meaning that Patrick didn't even realize he was putting into the song.  _ I guess I do have an alpha growl. It's just…more musical than animal _ .

He pushed the basement door open. "So," he said breathlessly, "I know I'm not your alpha--you don't want an alpha and I don't blame you--but--you shouldn't have to spend your heats in squalor, either. You shouldn't have to hide and fear and be miserable. So Andy and Joe and Marie and I--" He pulled Pete into the basement. "We took the money that Concordance paid us for the song--"

"You took the money?" Pete's gaze was locked on Patrick and rippled with betrayal. "For that song?"

Patrick shook his head quickly. "I wrote them a different song. A party song about dancing and sweat. They're giving the song to Paloma. They'll make her a hit and we'll just be credited as writers--all of us."

Pete's eyes were clouding over and Patrick figured he could go over the details later. "I can write more songs. Denise said the song would fulfill our agreement and they released us from signing."

"They--they never do that. Once they get you--"

"They don't want an unwilling band that knows how their little fake alpha scent experiment backfired and almost caused a riot." Patrick grinned and couldn't stop himself from leaning in to peck Pete's jaw. "We can sign with somebody else or stay indie. But we don't owe anything to Concordance anymore."

Pete's lower lip trembled. "You gave up a label…for me?" He dropped his gaze and his shoulders slumped. "All of you--you could have just kicked me out and signed as a trio and--"

"No, we really could  _ not have _ ." Patrick's voice took on an edge that had him stunned at his own violent reaction to that idea. "Listen, asshole," he said the term with affection, but it was a sharp affection. It had to be, in order to pierce Pete's stubborn self-loathing. "You promised me that we'd go places. My voice, your lyrics, our sound--you'd take us to the stars.  _ You  _ would take us to the stars. Not Concordance. Not some lonely-hearts gimmick or plastic manufactured idea of romance pre-packaged and made palatable for 'normal' people. You, me, Joe, Andy. Misfits, playing for the other misfits who don't have a place and won't fall in line." 

It was his turn to tip Pete's chin up. "You know--alphas who purr, omegas who growl, mated pairs who are in semi-open polyamorous relationships and give zero fucks about what other people think about their dynamic, people who think the Omega Network is full of propaganda and the A-Channel was the worst era ever to come out of TV?"

Patrick took a deep breath and shifted slightly, so that Pete could see further into the room. He reached into his jacket pocket and found the stereo remote. Low music swelled from the speakers and filled the room. "So we took that Concordance money and used it for something good. Something punk." He flipped on the power switch and the fairy lights inside the nest he'd built for Pete with his hands and his friends and his heart flared to life.

The curtains of the nest--brightly-patterned batik prints, dark fabrics with lush textures, and plain sheers--were tied back with silk-tasseled cords. "We bought the frame and curtains from Beds and Bowers with Joe's 40% off employee discount," he said.  _ God, it sounded lame. Look what we did for you, but we did it on the cheap _ , like that was something to be proud of.

"This is--you did this? For me?"

Patrick tangled his fingers together. "Yeah. You need a nest, Pete." His words piled up on each other in his rush to explain in the hopes Pete wouldn't take it in the wrong way. "I didn't do it to stake claim or anything--I--we--just wanted you to be safe and comfortable."

Pete's face remained blank as he stepped into the bower. "You kept my old bedding in here?"

Inside, the army blankets had been rolled up and tied to make bolsters surrounding a futon mattress with a duvet made of denim with faux leather edges. Patrick shoved his hands in his pockets. "I wasn't sure how much was comfort for you and how much was necessity, but it has your scent on it much more than the new stuff."

"Our scent," Pete said. He toed one of the blankets.

"I--yeah--I figured if you didn't want--having the scent of an alpha around couldn't hurt, if you don't want to be bothered. I mean--I can add to it, refresh it every so often, or…" he trailed off.

Patrick forced himself to meet Pete's eyes. Even if he saw anger there. But the look Pete gave him turned his insides to mush. Pete's eyes were molten gold rings around pupils blown with bottomless lust.

And Patrick, being the smooth criminal he was, held out the stereo remote to Pete. "It's got music."  _ God I am such a dork! _

Pete grabbed him by the lapels and flung him down on the bed. "It's got you," he growled. "Music's redundant." He climbed on top of Patrick and pinned his wrists. "I can't believe you did this for me." He lifted his head and looked around at the fairy lights glowing red and purple and warm gold, at the pillows piled on the futon mattress, the bolsters that surrounded them with scent, and the curtains keeping them locked in privacy and safety. "You put a lock on the door," he said.

Patrick nodded. "We used all the money from Concordance and rented the space for a whole year in the band's name. As far as anybody knows, it's practice space." He looked up at Pete. "I know it's a stupid question to ask during heat-onset but--are you mad at us? Did we overstep?"

Pete's jaw dropped. "Fuckin'  _ Christ _ , Patrick! The only thing I'm mad about right now is that your goddamn pants aren't crumpled in a ball at the bottom of my bed!" He leaned down, his lips stretching back in a smile one hundred percent untamed and unclaimed. "An alpha…in my lair."

Patrick jumped out of his skin at the growl in Pete's last words. Pete's cold fingers scrabbling at the button fly of his jeans added a little extra to the sensation and he gasped out a laugh as Pete's nails skritched lightly over the bare skin beneath his belly-button. "Pete!" he gasped. "This wasn't meant to trap you--you can tell me to fuck off and I'll leave--there are snacks in the mini-fridge and--"

"Shut up, Patrick."

Patrick clamped his lips together. His eyes fluttered closed and try as he might, the purr just wouldn't stop. And his jaw started to ache.

"The only thing I'm going to tell you to fuck is me." Pete breathed the words over Patrick's cheek. 

The warmth of his words brushed over Patrick's skin, down his neck, into his ear. He gulped. "Are you--are you sure?"

Pete leaned back. His pupils were still blown, but the rest of his features were serious as a heart attack. "Yes, Patrick Stump, I'm sure. You created a nest. You challenged the world for my attention. You defended my integrity and autonomy."

Patrick's heart clenched again. "I did those things because I lo--care about you, Pete."

"All those things are what an alpha should do to earn the attentions of an omega, but you did them for me as a person, not as a possession." Pete's expression suddenly lightened. "And you just admitted that you love me."

"I didn't say that--"

"You totally almost did! You caught yourself just in time, but I caught you in it and you're in my bed and--" Pete's eyes darkened and his grin turned predatory, "I'm going to take your knot so tight you'll be coming for  _ days _ ."

Patrick's eyes rolled back in his head. His last good brain cells left the building along with Elvis and Jimi Hendrix. Pete slid down his body and took Patrick's jeans as he went. Patrick set his hat and glasses down on the little side table while Pete leaned over and untied the sashes holding the curtains back. The fabrics fell down into place, creating a canopy of textures and colors and soft light and music around them that quickly filled with their mingled scents overlaid with the sweet tones of Pete's burgeoning heat-scent.

Pete shucked his sweats and boxers and flung his shirt and hoodie over his head in a mangled ball to the side of the bed while Patrick struggled to get his shoes and socks and bunched-up pants down before Pete pounced on him again. "We're doing this, Stump."

Patrick nodded, not trusting himself to speak. 

This time, the empty space glowed softly from the wall where the blankets had once been piled miserably in darkness. There was a bed, cushioned and soft and smelling like the two of them--collaborating with physiology this time instead of music and words. Patrick leaned up on his elbows to mete Pete halfway as their mouths collided. His fingers traced the inked thorns ringing Pete's collar.

He was gentle with the precious gift of Pete's body as he trailed light touches down Pete's spine and dipped lower, to where Pete's body had begun leaking slick. He was doing something right because Pete moaned and his breath was coming faster with every touch.

"Pete--" he gasped out. "You--you have to be absolutely sure, okay?"

For an answer, Pete keened and ground his hips down against Patrick's pelvis hard enough for his knot to throb in response.

"Jesus," Patrick muttered. "O-okay."

Pete buried his face in Patrick's neck, his hips continuing the grind as he nosed his way to the sensitive spot behind Patrick's ear, and the other sensitive spot at the base of his neck and-- _ oh, there's a new one _ \--in the hollow of his throat.

Pheromones lay thick in the air between them and Patrick's body responded, but it was Pete--his warmth, his presence, his personality, the shaky bass notes of his growls when Patrick refused to touch him where he needed it most--all those things focused Patrick's heartbeat into laser-guided orientation towards the base of his thickening cock.

"Is that for me?" Pete rumbled as his fingers danced along Patrick's shaft.

Patrick wished he could articulate something more than, "Nnghngh." He wanted to give Pete more than inarticulate grunts and rutting, but his whole abdomen was tight with streaks of fire winding through his muscles and his jaw started to really hurt with the effort it took not to sink teeth into those inked thorns.

He closed his eyes, willing some sense back into himself. "Do you--do you need to restrain me?"

Pete's entire body shuddered in his arms. "Jesus  _ fuck _ , Patrick. Need? No. Want to?  _ Hell yes _ , but some other time."

"I won't claim you if--" Pete's body was leaking more slick now, Patrick could feel it pooling between his own thighs as Pete straddled him.

"Patrick, I'll be heartbroken if you don't sink teeth in me in the next five minutes."

Oh. "Oh." Pete tilted his head to the side and grabbed Patrick's face in both hands, then pulled Patrick's head to his neck.  _ Oh _ .

Instincts fought tooth and claw with the shreds of his reason and no clear victor emerged which left only Patrick deciding to tighten his arms around Pete and flip them both around so that he pressed the bassist into the soft bedding.

Pete closed his eyes and shuddered, wriggling his shoulders a little into the softness. "This is--" He let out a long, shuddering sigh as Patrick began to kiss and lick down his neck, stopping at his torso to tug at the nipple ring with his teeth. "Decadent."

Patrick buried his nose in Pete's crotch, inhaling the scent in every defiance of his standards and felt like a goddamn hypocrite.

"God, put your mouth on me, Tricky. Please--"

Patrick slipped a hand against his own boxers to press his dick back into temporary submission. Pete's scent overwhelmed him, but no scent could compare to Pete's voice, Pete's words, the noises he made, or the look of soft amazement in his hot feral eyes as Patrick sunk gentle teeth into the inside of his thigh.

No random scent could entice him the way Pete's entire body shuddered and relaxed and became so gloriously inviting. Patrick followed up the bite with slow, even strokes of his hands and tongue that pushed Pete's thighs apart and finally teased his leaking hole.

"Patrick--"

"Shh. Will you let me take care of you?" Patrick glided his lips over the head of Pete's cock before taking him deep. Pete wailed and flopped back on the soft bedding. Patrick wanted to take Pete apart and put him back together again the same way he did with his words and set the right ones to melodies in his head. Spice and musk and hormones and music and poetry all mixed up to form a more complete Pete than any scent-signature left on a hoodie or rubbed onto blankets.

Patrick nosed Pete's balls, reading the omega's shudders and the slow, tiny movements that let him know Pete was welcoming him. He wasn't in rut, but damn if his body didn't send him all the same signs. He slipped one finger inside, then two. The tight warmth of Pete's body closed around his fingers but all his nerves sent messages straight to his dick.

"Yes…Trick…please…"

He licked a stripe up Pete's cock to circle the crown with his tongue and crooked his fingers inside Pete. "Come for me? Take the edge off." He took Pete all the way again, this time opening his throat to let his purr thrum up from his chest.

Pete shuddered. His body opened and he let out a long, strangled moan as he came down Patrick's throat, one hand fisted in Patrick's hair. Patrick could have drowned in pheromones and the taste of Pete, but he needed to stay present, stroking the omega's limbs until the shivers quieted.

When Patrick trailed kisses up over the bartskull tattoo to the thorns again, he checked Pete's expression. His heart clenched when he saw tear tracks at the corners of Pete's eyes. "Hey, no, what's--"

"Don't. It's  _ good _ , Patrick. It's--" Pete looked away, drawing a deep, shuddering breath. "I  _ want  _ this. For the first time, I want my heat, and I want the alpha I'm with. You get me?"

Patrick swallowed and nodded. He rubbed his cheek against Pete's and heard all the things Pete didn't say about his previous heats. "You're my first, too. I want to make you feel good and keep you here where it's safe and--" He was pretty sure he was babbling. "I want to say a lot of stupid things to you right now about taking my knot that sound like they come from pornos.  _ Bad  _ pornos."

Pete laughed, a soggy chuckle, and pushed Patrick down to their sides. "Tell me."

"It's stupid."

"I'm heat-stupid right now."

Patrick couldn't help but laugh in response. Even though his dick was so hard he could pound nails into concrete with it. He said as much and Pete's laugh danced across all his nerve endings in the warm, musky air of their nest.

"What else?" Pete demanded, rolling him all the way onto his back so he could straddle him.

Patrick licked his lips and let the stupid out. "I want to give you my knot like it's some kind of fuckin' prize and that's so-- _ alpha-hole _ ."

Pete squirmed on top of him, making matters worse, but so much better, and somehow used his toes to work Patrick's boxers down past his knees. "Wanna take your knot." He leaned in for a sloppy, dirty kiss. "Want you to fill me up. Scent me. Mark me. Let the world know I'm yours."

_ God I'm gonna need a mop and bucket to clean up all my jizz _ .

Pete snorted. A real laugh this time. Patrick realized he'd said that out loud and he started laughing too. In moments, they were both laughing hysterically, Pete grabbing fistfuls of his shirt and Patrick's fingers dancing around Pete's hips in little ticklish whirls and suddenly Pete was lifting his hips and sinking down on Patrick's cock and the laughs turned to sighs and the sighs turned to moans and Patrick was inside Pete.

Warm and tight, like coming home. Pete slapped his hand over Patrick's sternum, fingers splayed. He rocked his hips  and Patrick met his moves with complementary ones, working himself in deeper in time with their ragged breaths. "God, Pete--"

"Yeah." Pete moved faster.

Patrick was losing his desire to hold back, be civilized. His jaw ached. "Wanna--" He opened his mouth, losing the words.

"You can." Pete leaned down, swiped his tongue over Patrick's bottom lip, and tilted his head to the side to bare his throat.

Lightning-hot fire shot through Patrick as he thrust up his hips and brought down his teeth into the soft flesh of Pete's neck. Pete's body trembled and it was like magic, the way he opened that last little bit and Patrick's knot slipped in.

Pete cried out as Patrick's teeth sank in. He dug his fingernails into Patrick's chest, scoring little half-moons of bright pain into Patrick's skin. Patrick's jaw tensed. His tongue flicked over the coppery-sweet skin caught between his teeth, soothing what was abraded and tasting what was offered. Patrick flexed his hips again and felt the hot spill of Pete coming as his body tightened around Patrick's knot. 

Pete turned his head and nipped at the skin on Patrick's shoulder. Then Patrick was coming, too. Finally in the warm embrace of his omega's body, exactly where his knot was meant to be. 

Home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so...not *quite* it. There's an epilogue because I do those. Comments and kudos keep me from falling over. This was a big thing that leaked out of my brain and I'm glad it did. I hope you've enjoyed the ride.


	14. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raise a fist in defiance of everything they ever told you about the dark woods and the wild things that live there. You were born to run with them. A gentleman is simply a patient wolf.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this was a good adventure and a decent entry into the A/B/O library for Peterick fans. This was so much fun. Of all the stories to fall out of my brain, this was one of the easiest, even with me being unfamiliar with the "rules" of the A/B/O dynamic (and the liberties I've taken). I hope you enjoyed the wild ride these boys have had in spite of not being the poster children for their their orientation labels. Sometimes, you have to do it all ass-backwards and upside-down to get it right.
> 
> If you found this story by googling yourself, you had a dozen chances to back out and you can blame no one but yourself. But we won't tell if you won't.

Patrick didn't claim Pete. Not right away. Their scents were all over each other, but Patrick waited until the groundswell of support for Marie's ideas had grown--along with their band. Their largest crowd ever was a rally for omega independence in Millennium Park. 

The Sanctuary Coalition set up tents and tables in the back that sold band merch, Sanctuary merch, and had petitions available for people to sign that demanded the city zone neighborhoods for omega sanctuary space. The band played in the concert shell to several thousand cheering fans of all orientations. 

Concordance set up a table across the street from the park and got occasional wanderers. Denise looked hot and uncomfortable in her white suit, slumped in a chair behind the table that held pamphlets about scent-matching and the so-called "natural order" of orientations. 

Patrick almost felt sorry for her, but only after Marie jumped up on stage. "We did it! We got ten thousand signatures! The ballot initiative goes forward!"

Andy thwacked his cymbals. Joe picked up a can of silly string and squirted it high in the air, where it landed on Marie's ball cap. Patrick blew two short blasts on an air horn and tossed it to the side of the stage, and Pete screamed into the microphone. "We are Fall Out Boy from right here in Chicago, Illinois and we say _fuck yeah_ to omega independence! This one's called 'I don't care what your ass smells like because I wanna dance with you' so fuck scent-matching, this is _punk rock!_ "

Patrick would later object to the title ('I don't care what your ass smells like?' Really, Peter?) but when the votes were tallied after that election and the sanctuary zoning law passed, Patrick dropped to one knee and asked _Pete_ to claim _him_ because as far as he was concerned, Pete was an _entire ass_ , and he smelled _great_.

Pete said yes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, @Laudanum_cafe - I hope you enjoyed this gift. Writing fics for friends gives me the biggest kick and I hope I've done the world and the story justice.

**Author's Note:**

> Some quick universe notes: This is not an ABO universe where the orientations have always been around. In this universe, an event called the changewave spread through humanity some time in the early seventies, disrupting culture and causing a lot of societal upset around sexuality when ABO orientations began to manifest. Though many scientists objected to rigid orientation classifications, people have always pushed to put labels on what they don't fully understand. Decades later, young people are challenging those assumptions


End file.
